The Stuff Legends Are Made Of
by Spikey44
Summary: Allow me to extend an invitation to you, dear Fran, and offer you the chance to share in mine own ambitions. You could be, perhaps, the first ever Viera sky pirate.' BalthierFran. Fran POV
1. Chapter 1

The Stuff Legends Are Made Of

_Disclaimer: all known and recognisable characters are products of Square Enix and I own them not. All unrecognisable and unknown characters are mine. I make no profit from this fable. _

_Author note: This story is a prequel to my other work 'A sky pirate odyssey'. The Balthier and Fran in this tale are the same as portrayed in that story, this is just based about two and half to three years before the game begins and they are understandably different_

_Fran is apathetic and distant, a passive audience in her own life, bitterness creeping into her soul._

_Balthier is nineteen going on __twenty -__ three years from Archades and somewhat mentally and emotionally scarred, not to mention in serious trouble!_

Chapter One: Every Legend has a beginning

How she ended up on a Rozarrian slavers ship bound for one of the smaller Purveema's that floated off the south-eastern coast of Bhujerba was of little consequence in the grand scheme of things Fran decided.

Misadventure and twists of fate, the stuff of life for Humes and heretical Viera both.

The meat of the issue would be how she managed to escape this self same slaving vessel.

In chains; the property of pirates, thieves and letches or as a free woman, the blood of her captors on her hands and the wind at her back?

Fran had been a wanderer of the thorny paths of men some forty-seven years by the time she found herself the prize lot in this illegal slave auction and she had grown accustom to this very circumstance of fate.

In those forty-seven years she had learned much and seen more.

She felt that she understood the ways of Humes better than any Viera who ever left the nurturing, but stifling, embrace of the Wood before her.

That was not, however, to say that her understanding of Humes was that great; only better than most of her kind.

Her current situation being a testament to the gaps in her understanding.

To Fran the discerning characteristics of the meat and sweat reeking men who man-handled the chained Hume cattle, herding them onto the make-shift stage, were of no consequence.

Just more Humes. Cruel, brutish and ignorant to the majesty of the world around them.

Nor did she pay much attention to the baying crowd of potential bidders filling the large chamber of the warehouse that was the only structure built on this floating lump of rock.

Fran did, however, carefully survey her surroundings for possible escape routes. None were immediately obvious.

Something, or rather someone, did pique her attention however.

A young Hume male sharply dressed in a white shirt that shone in the smoky gloom of the warehouse and an intricately patterned waistcoat vest done in shades of neon blue and black velvet, made his way with practiced nonchalance through the throng of bidders.

Fran did not know then, and would never know hence why this Hume youth captured her attention as so very few of his kind had before.

But he did and she found herself watching the male, who weaved through the throng with the ease of a fish navigating rocks in strong current, with interest.

Fran saw, because as Viera she was cursed to always see what was there and not what she might think was there, that the Hume was busily and deftly stealing purses from the baying crowd.

Fran narrowed her eyes speculatively as she realised he wasn't just stealing purses after all.

Intrigued she watched as the Hume, with features as sharp and clever as a fox, sidled up to one heavily muscled man in an eye-patch and murmured something in his ear causing the man to grunt out a laugh.

All the while the Hume's clever hands were uncorking a vial of pale reddish liquid and simultaneously removing the man's Betlegeuse gun from its holster on the muscled man's hip.

Still laughing and joking with the man the young Hume opened the chamber on the gun and poured the liquid into it, before returning the gun to the man's holster.

Fran had not been taken by such curiosity for the antics of a particular Hume in quite sometime and she watched the young Hume dance from one group of reprobates to another intently.

A laugh here, a wink for a woman there, and all the while he continued his inexplicable business.

Secreting vials of the strange liquid in nooks, crannies and in one instance, into the belt loops of a man passed out drunk on the floor.

It was while she was distracted by the strange Hume that she was pulled to the front of the stage, a piercingly bright spotlight burned down on her, blinding and disorientating.

But to Fran sight was secondary to hearing and the light did not inhibit that.

'Friends, companions, loyal customers. Today we 'ave a treat for you, eh? A fine specimen of pure blood Viera!'

The auctioneer's thick Rozarrian accent mangled the words.

' We start de bidding at t'irty t'ousand gil, eh?'

The bidding was fast, furious and fiercely determined.

Fran strained her sensitive ears to pick out the unusually refined and cultured tones of the young Hume thief above the pack of thieves, cut-throats and pirates.

' Ah, but look at her, Remus, a true blooded Viera. Quite a prize to take home to your lovely Maud, wouldn't you say?'

'Got no interest in no bloody rabbit wench, Balthier.'

A sigh of exaggerated patience from the young thief,

' Remus, in all these months, have I steered you wrong?'

'Do I hear any more bidders for t'irty nine t'ousand? Come now friends, goods like dis one come along but once in de blue moon, eh?'

' Bervenia.' The older eye patched man growled.

' Forty thousand gil!'

' Must you always bring that up?'

Another sigh, ' I have said that what happened in the Aerodrome was a misunderstanding. I was not trying to escape, merely negotiating a better rate on fuel for the airship.'

' Forty-t'ree t'ousand gil -do I hear any more bidders for forty-t'ree t'ousand gil?'

' Yer a damned silver-tongued liar, boy, and yer should count yer lucky stars I don't hang yer from these rafters with yer own entrails.'

' Forty-four t'ousand gil to de man wit' de parrot, going once, going two times, going –'

The Hume boy in the waist coat laughs.

' Perhaps you should. Though if you were to take that action I'm not sure your wallet or your wife would thank you. Liar I may be but I'm a lucrative one.'

Fran who had been watching the auctioneer carefully, particularly the scimitar that hung in it's scabbard from his belt, even while keeping half her attention on the conversation between the two Humes, chose her moment to land a round house kick to the auctioneer's rotund stomach.

Grabbing at the hilt of the scimitar she pulled it loose as the auctioneer fell into the roaring crowd.

Moving with the fluid grace of all Viera Fran used the scimitar to deflect a bullet aimed at her head from one of the slavers guns and kicked out at the wave of slavers and bidders that came piling on to the stage.

Ferocious and well practiced though she undoubtedly was, Fran was soon over powered by the sheer numbers of men surrounding her.

She was being forced to her knees, her arms savagely pinned behind her back and one of the slavers, a man whose face was a criss-cross of scars, gripped her long, delicate ears in one calloused fist.

In some ways she was grateful that the painful grip the slaver had on her ears muffled the sounds of the explosion that blew out the back wall of the warehouse and knocked many pirates and brigands to the floor like ten pins.

The den of criminals did not know how to react as smaller explosions from various places around the warehouse released dust clouds of a substance Fran immediately recognised as Mist.

Mist rendered cold and inert through Hume science.

On its own the Mist was harmless in this form, even to those sensitive to its vagaries, as Fran was, however the phantom images it produced were enough to confuse and disorientate the sundry criminals and slavers.

Fran used their inattention to escape her captors and bolted for the hole the original explosion had made in the back wall of the warehouse.

Fran was fleet of foot but hampered by her manacles, chaining her wrists and neck, affecting her balance as she ran.

She fell and ended up falling down a steep decline towards the make shift docking ports for the airships.

She came to an ungraceful thudding heap a little ways from where a nasty confrontation was taking place in front of a particularly attractive airship, that looked rather like a moth with its wings fanning out behind it and its hull painted in swirls of blue, pink and pale orange.

' Yer pushed yer luck too far, Balthier.'

The muscled, grizzled pirate called Remus had his gun pointed menacingly at the young Hume in the extravagant vest.

The younger Hume had his back to Fran and was clearly on the wrong side of the dock, Remus standing between the youth and his chosen method of escape.

'One might say, considering how things have worked out, that I didn't push my luck far enough.'

Despite the youth's obviously perilous predicament the Hume managed to sound nonchalantly amused by the situation.

' Aye, an now yer die, yer bloody toff.'

The pirate Remus pulled the trigger on his gun. Fran, view obstructed by the other Hume's body, only saw the flare of multi-coloured light and heard the pirate Remus cry. The smell of burning Mist hit the back of Fran's throat, nauseating and bittersweet.

The younger Hume, Balthier, walked towards the fallen Remus, rainbow hued vapour rising from a scorched burn mark covering his chest.

Balthier kicked the man's gun from his limp hand across the deck of the landing bay and crouched by the man to check his vitals.

' Powdered fire Magicite. My father taught me about it. Mixed with gun powder it packs quite a wallop, you'll find.'

Tone conversational Balthier checked the non-existent vital signs of the other man and quickly got to his feet.

' Right then,' He muttered to himself, ' time to affect that daring escape.'

The sounds of a mob rapidly approaching from the warehouse carried over the night air towards Fran loud enough that the Hume heard it too. He moved with haste towards the waiting airship.

Fran rose to her feet and moved up towards the Hume. Prepared to force him to take her with him or steal the airship from him if she must.

He could not know more of airships than she did. He was less than a third her years. She raised the scimitar in readiness.

The Hume started speaking without bothering to turn to face her, his voice blandly amused.

'Now, now, my dear Viera, no need to be hasty. I was going to invite you along, one unwilling guest of this Purveema to another, so there is really no call for violence, hmm?'

'You knew I was here?' Stopping she lowered the scimitar, though retained her fighting stance.

The Hume, Balthier, turned around and smiled at her, bright, young, eager.

' Process of elimination. That lot of braying slobs make so much noise, you, on the other hand, do not.'

Without waiting for Fran's response, not that she had planned to make any, Balthier opened the entrance hatch for the airship. He started up the retractable boarding ladder.

' Ordinarily I would be gentlemanly and let you go first, but frankly, I fear you might fly off and leave me.'

He quirked an eyebrow as he offered his hand to help Fran aboard. She ignored the hand and looked around the small cargo hold.

' You fly?'

Was all she said as they entered the more spacious main cabin.

' Surprisingly well, actually.'

Fran did not worry herself to puzzle out the Hume's enigmatic response instead she settled herself in the co-pilots chair.

'Then you had best fly, pirate, else the mob will be upon us.'

A loud bang from somewhere further down the gangplank caused the Hume, who had not heard the mobs thunderous approach, to jump.

Recovering from his surprise the Hume started the engines and thrusters. 'Right.'

Twenty minutes into an airship dogfight, where the small craft they travelled in should have been blown to pieces long hence, Fran had come to two important revelations about this odd Hume.

Number one was that he did, in fact, fly surprisingly well for one so young, and secondly he seemed physically incapable of shutting up for more than two seconds at a time.

'Easy does it now, there's a good girl.'

He murmured as he executed a potentially lethal barrel roll while performing a nose dive that took them close to plunging into the ocean.

Fran studied the read-outs on the radar screen.

' They break off pursuit.'

' And rightly so, we're right in the heart of Bhujerban airspace now.'

' We land in Bhujerba?'

It was as good a place as any to Fran who called nowhere home.

' I'm afraid not. The Strahl is known in Bhujerba. Nasty business a few months back. They know to look for us there. No I thought to head for Balfonheim.'

' The Strahl?'

The Hume smiled proudly flicking a sideways glance her way.

' The ship; the most beautiful airship in all of Ivalice, and mine now.'

Fran studied her companion more closely now that she had opportunity to do so.

She doubted that he had seen twenty summers yet and despite the sharpness of his features a youthful softness was still evident to his face.

As was the shadow of malnutrition and mistreatment, barely visible to less keen eyes than hers and disguised artfully behind fanciful clothes but Fran had seen enough deprivation in the Hume world to recognise its tells.

' You killed the man Remus for his ship? The Strahl? This is the reason for your actions this night?'

There was no judgement in her tone or marking her curiosity.

Humes killed other Humes for many petty and childish reasons and she was long since passed the point where it bothered her over much.

Despite this her words had the effect on the young Hume that his hands tightened spasmodically on the steering wheel and he accidentally pushed the sensitive craft into a dangerous dive.

The Hume stared at her with wide and defensive brown eyes once he had righted the craft.

' I did not kill him. He killed himself.' He said leadenly.

' You tampered with his gun, so that if he fired it would backfire and kill him.' Fran pointed out reasonably.

The Hume's mouth was pursed in a thin line and he was pale.

' There was no choice. Next time I will have a better plan.'

Fran cocked her head to the side and studied him.

' You have never killed before.' She stated recognising the signs in his glassy stare and paleness.

She felt a distant pang of sympathy. Whoever this Hume was it was never easy to take the life of another.

Even to Fran who had killed only when she must, but still more than she would like, the taking of life left its mark. As it should, for all life was precious.

The Hume looked at her, perhaps sensing the quiet sympathy in her gaze. He took a deep breath and released it carefully.

Then with conscious effort that Fran could see clearly as she watched him, he pasted the same look of amused nonchalance that seemed habitual, back on his face.

'You know I don't think I've introduced myself.'

He flashed that same bright and eager grin; a very young man impatient to leave his mark on the world.

' My name is Balthier. Former first mate, albeit under duress, to the late sky pirate Remus. Now, Balthier sky pirate extraordinaire, and soon to be legend of these skies.'

Fran found herself oddly, and uncharacteristically, amused.

' Legend of the skies?'

Again the Hume seemed to read her better than he should have been able to, for his smirk danced with shared humour.

' Indeed. I admit there's some work to do, Remus hogged most of the limelight, but I predict in a few short months I shall be the most infamous gentleman pirate Ivalice has ever known.'

' A gentleman pirate you say?'

Though her passive expression did not falter, Fran felt the first inkling to laugh that she had felt in many a long year.

The youth before her smirk deepened, an odd mix of self-aware wry humour and earnest sincerity.

' It will be my calling card; the thing that sets me apart from all the sundry pirating dross.'

He explained grandly, warming to his words and gesturing with his free hand not currently needed to steer the ship.

' I have no desire to become a meat headed brute like Remus and that lot we just left behind, so I shall bring a little class and refinement to this pirating business. The fact that I shall be robbing the wealthy and upstanding citizens of Ivalice blind does not excuse one of rudeness.'

He glanced at Fran quickly face alight with earnest intent and eyes bright with his own peculiar ambition.

' Really I have this all worked out, you know.'

Despite herself Fran could not help it. She laughed.

Softly, and really it was no more than a chuckle, but as anyone who knew Fran, not that any still did that lived, could attest to how rare such a break in her composure was.

' You are a child, Hume.'

The youth pouted, ' Well that's hardly nice. Especially as you have me to thank for your escape from that slavers auction.'

Fran quirked an eyebrow, 'You used me as your distraction to ignite your Mist bombs.'

'And you used me, and my brilliantly made bombs, to enact your own escape, in my airship to boot. And really, it is not as though my age is anything I can help now, is it? Anymore than you can your ears.'

'My ears? What is wrong with my ears?'

The youth smirked and he slouched back in his seat.

' Nothing at all that I can see my dear.' He all but purred.

' I simply meant that my youth is as much an inescapable part of myself as your Viera ears.'

Fran felt just ever so slightly foolish though she showed it not at all.

She was also less than pleased with the heat she could see building in the young hume's eyes.

It was as well that Balfonheim was fast approaching and they would soon part ways.

'Not so, for you will soon age while I and my ears will remain the same.'

As is the curse of all Viera who would walk the path of men; a world filled with strange and fascinating Humes who died too quickly for Fran.

They died while still changing, growing and learning, and left Fran no closer to understanding why it was she let herself suffer so for trying to live in their world with them.

' Do Viera not age, then?'

The Hume asked no longer looking amorous, instead curiosity burned bright in his eyes.

'I had heard Viera were immortal but had dismissed it as myth.'

' Not immortal are the Viera, but time inflicts her punishments on us at slower rate than Humes.'

' Hmm. I am not sure that that is preferable at all.' The Hume mused, surprising Fran.

' While I do not relish the notion of growing old and feeble, I'm not sure I should enjoy watching the world change around me while I remained ever the same.'

Fran blinked shocked by the youth's depth of perception, even as his ever-present smirk returned to hide the spark of sympathetic understanding that had coloured his expression.

'Quite terribly dull I would think.'

He murmured dryly returning his attention to the world outside and the approach to Balfonheim.

'You have been to the port of Balfonheim before?' He queried as they began their descent.

' I saw it first when the first settles came from the fallen Purveema Litnes.'

The youth blinked but recovered quickly.

' Well, then I imagine the town will hold no shocks for you.'

Then he laughed, causing Fran to look up from the Strahl's screens to his grinning face.

' I will not ask, that would be exceedingly rude.'

Fran quirked an eye brow, ' Rude indeed.' She agreed.

' Though I shall confess to being mightily curious.' He continued laughter in the words.

'May one inquire for how long you have been travelling Ivalice? I was given to the impression that Viera did not often leave their villages, and seldom travel alone.'

' You are well informed for a Hume.'

She pointed out avoiding the question regarding either her age or how long she had wandered.

' Blame it on a misspent youth, my dear.'

He did not seem upset that she had answered none of the questions he had put to her about herself, though she suspected he recognised the fact; such an odd Hume but not unpleasantly so.

The rest of the descent they spent in silence and soon were docked and ready to disembark in the Balfonheim aerodrome.

'Well now, my dear Viera, let me say that it has been a pleasure escaping with you this night.'

The youth gave her an exaggerated courtly bow, which Fran recognised as in the Archadian style, ruined the effect of courtliness by grinning broadly and jogged off towards the aerodrome exit.

Fran glanced back at the airship, the Strahl, once more. She truly was a lovely ship.

An old model for this day and age but built of quality to last. Sad then she would have no further opportunity to learn the intricacies of her design.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Cultural Misunderstandings, propositions gone awry

Fran made her own, more sedate way, towards the aerodrome exit only to find that the would-be gentleman sky pirate was still there.

' The dictates of gentlemanly behaviour require me to ask if you have money for room and board?'

He inquired leaning casually against the vacant commercial flight desk and playing distractedly with the cuff of his shirt sleeve.

' I will manage thank you.'

Fran continued walking past the empty check-in desks for commercial and private flights and towards the noise and bustle of the Port.

The Hume dropped into step, though he was forced to trot to keep up with her longer strides.

' Then I will dispense with the ways of gentlemen and get straight to the piracy.'

Fran stopped and looked down at the Hume quizzically, ' I do not fathom your meaning.'

The Hume sighed and plucked nervously at the immaculate cuff of his shirt sleeve.

'I have been thinking while we travelled together.'

'No.' Fran said flatly.

The Hume blinked at her, ' But I haven't even – '

' You are young and I have found that the males of your kind can not help themselves at your age, so I will be kind and say only no.'

' My age again?'

The Hume frowned clearly puzzled, but that confusion began to slide quickly towards annoyance.

' Now, my dear Viera, I may not be as old as the Cerobi Steppes as you claim to be, but I assure you I know how to handle myself when the moment comes.'

Fran found his allusion to her age and his language crass in the extreme when discussing such a matter, but she had found that Humes, particular young male Humes, were like to be as such.

Fran, who had started walking quickly out onto the streets turned and glared down on the Hume who was all but chasing after her in his lust.

' I am no painted lady to satiate your appetite.'

'Painted -?' He began before, much to Fran's consternation, he doubled up with a sudden fit of laughter.

'You thought I meant...'

The Hume struggled and failed to regain his composure and fell back to laughing leaning drunkenly against a stack of packing crates in the alley leading to the port's Gallerina Marketplace.

' You would laugh at me?'

Fran did not know if he meant insult, or if he had in fact run quite mad.

'No, no.'

He gasped, ' Forgive me.'

Waving a ring-bedecked hand to her in apology he tried valiantly to stand straight and meet her eyes.

' I think, my dear Viera, we have been speaking at cross purposes. I was not attempting to proposition you for some tawdry act of carnality at all.'

' But you do have proposition for me?' Fran was certain of this at least.

The Hume nodded vigorously clearly still tickled by her misreading of his intent.

' Yes, yes. I saw how you handled that sword back on the Purveema. I have seen few outside of the Imperial army do better.'

' I have long since mastered most Hume weapons.'

Fran could not see why this should so interest the Hume and her curiosity, for better or worse, demanded she stay to hear his reasoning.

'Even better then.'

Fran watched as the Hume played once more with his cuffs, stopping to mutter something about a lost button.

'I have just embarked upon the opening chapter of my illustrious career as gentleman sky pirate through the time honoured method of killing my captain.'

The Hume gesticulated grandly still frowning over his cuffs.

' Alas there is the small matter of the equally time honoured pirate tradition of retribution by those who, either because he owned them money or misplaced loyalty, feel it necessary to avenge Remus with the spilling of my blood.'

Fran found her brows rising, ' A paradox. How can it be tradition to usurp a captain's position through bloodshed yet other pirates will persecute those who do so?'

A smirk is part answer; the Hume rests his hands on the twin belts heavy with full pouches that encircle his waist.

' Pirates can be a contrary breed. For the most I think the motivation is any excuse to perform acts of wanton violence.'

'And you tell me this why?'

The Hume blinks, gathering his thoughts, 'Ah, straight to point. I like that.'

Fran waited as the Hume appeared acutely uncomfortable for a brief moment while he considered his next words.

' Considering my actions of this night I find myself in need of a bodyguard.'

' Pardon?'

Not meeting her eyes the would-be pirate spoke down to his leather sandals; suddenly acting his age.

' You have professed yourself an expert in all weapons, and I have witnessed the fact. I would employ your services as a guard of sorts, at least until my claim to the Strahl is ratified by the pirate king Nylous.'

In forty-seven years Fran had been asked by Humes to tell her Viera secrets.

She had been asked to be life companion to those who would ask nothing of her but her company; begged to reveal the truths of the Green Way to the few Humes that would learn of it.

She had been propositioned for every lewd act conceivable and even employed as a gardener. Never had she been engaged as bodyguard.

'I have plenty of Gil.'

He added somewhat desperately, rather foolishly jangling his Gil pouch filled to bursting with the Gil stolen from the pirates at the slave auction.

' You would ask me to protect you? For how long?'

Not that Fran had much interest in time. Its passing was a certainty. Already sundered from her Viera calling what she did with her allotment of it out in the Hume world was of little consequence to her.

' As I said, once Nylous has accepted that my claim to the Strahl is valid and Remus died in the proper method, by that I mean, killed by his own first mate, then no pirate can justify killing me for sport.'

'You sound as though you quote scripture.'

'As matter of fact I do. Pirates have a code. Hardly the legislature of the Empire, but even pirates need some law and order.'

'So you would seek out this Nylous?'

The Hume sighed. Looking oddly furtive.

'Eventually, sadly it is not as simple a matter as just telling my tale and asking Nylous to accept it. If I want to be pirate by right I will have to bring Nylous a worthy gift.'

' A bribe, you speak of.'

The Hume shrugged. ' He is a pirate king, after all. Though in my experience all kings, and Emperors, have their greed in common.'

'So you must act the pirate and steal gift for this Nylous before you can be called pirate?'

' Precisely. You catch on quick, you could be a pirate yourself.'

Fran considered the turn of fate that had thrust her and this eccentric youth together and offered up, as it was want to do, a new diversion for Fran to follow while she waited out her time.

'Very well, Hume. I accept your proposal. I will assist you.'

The youth gave her a smile as radiantly happy as a sunrise and as young and innocent as a spring sky.

'Marvellous. I sense that this will be a lucrative partnership for us both.'

Fran merely quirked an eyebrow, tossed her long spiderweb fine hair behind her and started off towards the nearest Inn. Her new charge trotted valiantly to keep abreast with her.

'By the way, as I said before, my name is Balthier, not Hume. Balthier is the name of a Leading Man, Hume does not distinguish me from anyone.'

'Leading Man, say you? What of the Gentleman Pirate?'

He smiles, ' I am that too; Leading Man in my own adventures, gentleman and pirate by profession. It all works out rather nicely wouldn't you say?'

' Indeed, and I am Fran, not Dear Viera.'

The Hume -Balthier – smiled at her with all the contentment of a puppy.

'Fran.'

He purred the single, simple syllable of her name.

A name she gave to precious few Humes. As he did so Fran was not as surprised as she thought she would be to find that the sound of his voice speaking her name pleased her.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Viera and water do not mix

' Pretty, isn't it?'

Fran took her time looking around the small, deserted speck of verdant rock that floated, like a particle of dust in the sky, part of the retinue of trailing islands following as a comets tail, a much larger Purveema orbiting Mount Bur-Omisace.

The scents of damp, dark soil, thick foliage and fruits ripening naturally on over-burdened boughs filled Fran with a paradoxical sense of loss and contentment all at once.

So like Golmore it was.

' You say this land is yours?'

She questioned Balthier who strolled passed her shoving vines and branches aside with the ignorant brutality of all his kind.

' In the legal sense? No. This tiny Purveema and all its siblings belong to the Gran Kiltias, however I doubt his Grace Ananstasis has ever even seen the place, so I doubt he'll much mind our intrusion.'

' How did you find this island?'

' Ah, that's not much of a tale really, quite frightfully dull.'

He said in the brisk, light tone he used when he did not want to discuss it but had not the inclination to attempt a lie, either.

'I find I am troubled by something.'

Fran admitted as she followed Balthier through the jungle and towards his 'cache' of hidden supplies.

' Hmm?'

' How did you come to be a first mate to a man you despised enough to kill?'

Balthier stopped and looked back at her as they entered a shady clearing in the thick woodland.

Resting his newly brought gun against his shoulder Fran watched as the smirk slipped up over his face.

'I do believe, Fran, that is the first person question I've ever heard you ask me. I am exceedingly flattered.'

' You attempt to avoid answering the question?'

She stepped out into the clearing moving towards the silver tongued pirate. He opened his mouth to speak his hands coming up as if to ward her off.

'Care -'

Splooosh.

'..ful!.'

The land gave way under her feet and Fran fell into thick, muddy water at least nine feet deep.

Fran surged up out of the water, hair covering her face and water clogging her ears causing them to twitch intolerably.

'….Fran……Fran?'

Above her head she saw his silhouette against the sunlight.

'Fran are you well?'

' I am wet.' It is the most pertinent response.

' I am in a water filled pit.'

'Yes, sorry about that. I'm so used to it being there that I forget you wouldn't know its location. Stay there I'll go and fetch some rope.'

Known its location? He had known of this pit and neglecting to inform her?

When she was out of this hole she would have words with the pirate on gentlemanly behaviours. Viera despise nothing so much as water in their ears.

To the pirates credit he returns quickly with the rope, tied in a loop so that Fran can fasten the loop around her waist and use it to walk up the walls of the pit, Balthier anchoring the rope from above.

His face twists upon seeing her emerge from the pit with just barely concealed amusement.

It was well for him that he controlled the urge to laugh.

'Here, I bought a towel from the Strahl.'

Fran all but snatched it from him. She truly despised water in her ears. Mud slid down her body and her long legs in slow, cloying trails. The stench was vile.

'You have much explaining to do pirate.'

Balthier sighed watching her with an odd expression on his face.

He played with the shirt he wore. Brushing invisible lint from the velvet shoulders of his new peacock green waistcoat, trimmed in silver.

' An accident, tis all, the Purveema is dotted with a dozen more pits like this. Defence mechanisms, harmless for the most part, though I advise you make sure to remove all the mud, it is a mild irritant to the skin when it dries.'

' Why did you not warn me of these pits you have dug?'

Her ears were clean and her hearing was no longer muffled by mud.

Her legs and arms were beginning to itch and sting however. She sat down on a fallen tree trunk to finish drying herself off.

'You think I made them? No, I know of them from experience, just as you now know.'

Tugging fiercely at his cuffs Balthier came and perched on the log beside her.

' Count yourself lucky, my dear Fran, you were in that filth but minutes. I was left there for days.'

Fran quirked an eyebrow and Balthier shrugged, though he could not quite school his expression to its usual mildness.

'Remus was not a man to take constructive criticism well; or any criticism for that matter. There was not an inch of skin on me that didn't itch for days after.'

' If this Remus mistreated you why stay with him?'

Balthier looked away abstracted.

'Oh he did not mistreat me. He treated me rather well compared to others with the misfortune of calling him captain, and if one wishes to be a pirate, one must learn from a pirate.'

With that Balthier jumped to his feet and reached down to offer Fran a hand,

'Shall we be off then? I want to bury the cache before nightfall. Some rather vicious fiends are known to wander these woods come darkness.'

Fran stood, ignoring the offered hand and shook out her hair, the ends clumped with mud. Little that could be done for it now, however.

'Bury the cache? You are not retrieving one?'

For a moment an expression of almost comic blankness washed his face, chased quickly by the dawning realisation of his verbal slip-up. His scent sharp with momentarily alarm and imminent duplicity.

' Yes, right. That's what I meant.' He lied airily. She had quickly come to recognise the sound.

' A slip of the tongue, of course I meant retrieve, dear Fran.'

Fran did not reprimand him for the use of the unearned and unwarranted endearment, or his continued mendacity.

She had travelled with this strange pirate for no more than days but she already suspected that he rarely paid much attention to what he said.

His verbose manner no doubt meant to simply give his mind time to ponder other things.

He was also, Fran suspected, something of a habitual liar.

They tracked through the thick undergrowth under the canopy of trees the very twin of those that obscure the sky from the eyes of Eruyt village back in the depths of Golmore Jungle.

Occasionally Balthier would mutter something to himself, fists balled at his hips, while he consulted some mental map as to the way forward.

It mattered not to Fran who could walk through the silent forest paths and imagine herself returned in time almost fifty years and once more a Viera whose world was encompassed and contained within the Wood's cloistered embrace.

Eventually when Fran had begun to suspect that the pirate had got them both lost he laughed with impish delight and pointed to a patch of innocuous dirt grandly with the blade of the shovel he had carried over one shoulder the entire time, except when using it to brain Steeling bats swooping from the trees.

'Here we are, found it.'

She could not help but detect just a hint of relief in his triumphant exclamation. Immediately he went to work digging into the rich black soil.

He did not ask Fran's assistance and she saw no reason to offer it, as he had brought but one shovel.

Nor did she try and ascertain exactly what the pirate was doing. He would only lie to her once more and in truth it mattered none to her in any rate.

Instead she wandered off to where the land tapered away into open sky.

Clouds and air rushing beneath the floating island like the cerulean oceans.

Though a part of her very being ached in cold and constant silence for all that she had left behind Fran knew that that suffering would never become so great that she would sacrifice sights, sounds and experiences like this.

Standing aloft where earth met sky, tall, proud and unafraid.

' Exhilarating isn't it.'

Fran turned slowly, having heard his footfalls coming up behind her.

Balthier came abreast of her and looked out at the swirling sky, wisps of cloud shredding and spiralling in the endless canvas of blue.

' As a child I once heard a tale of a people who had wings like birds and could fly without the need of airships. I used to wish to grow wings for years after, my father scolded me for such foolish notions.'

' The Viera are wedded by soul and deed to the earth, to the Wood and the Green Way.'

She did not know why she said this to him, the two of them staring out at the sky below and above and all around them. Except that the sadness and the longing she heard in his words set her own soul, distantly, to echo the sentiment.

Balthier merely nodded. ' Yet here you are, a Viera, and quite clearly in love with the sky, just as I am.'

'Viera do not love and I am Viera no longer.' She said almost sharply.

Balthier smirked at her, 'Be that as it may, that does not contradict what I just said. Nor do you in fact refute it.'

Fran frowned, reviewing her words. Viera do not love and I am Viera no longer.

Clever Hume, to see so clearly the unintended slip that Fran had not; Viera may not love, but if Fran was Viera no longer then perhaps she was in fact capable of the love he spoke of?

Not sure how to refute him or even if she wished too, Fran turned sharply on her heels and made for the direction she had come, towards where he had been digging.

'If you have completed your task, we should make haste and leave, daylight flees at speed.'

She chose to ignore the low sound of his chuckles as he followed her into the woods.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four: It's not the lies Humes tell, it's how they tell them

'A gentleman would offer assistance at such times.'

Fran pointed out dryly as she high-kicked another angry pirate into the Balfonheim bay.

' A gentleman might at that, but he thinks that this lady would hardly appreciate the gesture, nor does she seem to need it.'

Balthier bit into the apple he had purloined from one of the street vendors carts, while he lounged a top of a stack of packing crates, Altair gun loosely clasped in one hand.

Fran turned towards him as the last of the three pirate brigands turned tail and ran as fast as his thick, scaly Bangaa legs could go. Fran had never liked Bangaa.

'For you dear lady.'

Balthier threw her an apple and a healing potion. Fran caught both neatly.

She downed the potion in one, though she scarce had need of it and chased the foul taste away with a bite of fresh, tart green apple.

'These pirates, they were part of Remus's crew?'

'One of them, yes.'

Balthier shimmied down from the crates and smoothed the wrinkles from his vest, this one pale sky blue patterned with veins of pale green.

'This Remus was a powerful pirate lord, to command more than one crew of men.'

It was not question but observation. Fran noticed that like her, Balthier ate the entire apple, core, pips and all.

'Cruel and wasteful, actually. But one should never underestimate those qualities when it comes to matters of coercion and retribution.'

Balthier replied briskly, his scent sharpening with fear and hate at the mention of his former master.

'And it serves what purpose to be here in Balfonheim when you know they are after your blood, Balthier?'

Fran, had she been inclined to care, may have been irritated by this Hume's furtive and increasingly erratic behaviours and his absolute unwillingness to divulge his plans to her.

Stopping just outside the Whitecap Inn Balthier smiled, opening the door and gesturing for Fran to proceed him inside.

' I told you, Fran, if one wants to be taken seriously as a pirate, one has to play the part, no time to be a shrinking violet.'

They made their way across the pub to one of the tables by the wide open windows facing out to sea.

No one paid them much mind. It seemed that the men and women of Balfonheim were adept at keeping their heads down when it came to trouble.

' And your books tell you this, do they?' Fran sniffed.

She had thought that he merely jested when he told her, with confidence, that much of his inspiration for gentlemanly piracy came from books, then he had shown her the books.

' Oh, I grow tired of those. Who wants to read books when ones exploits can inspire the writing of them?'

He smiled at her and Fran pointedly turned her face away to look out at the ocean.

' Balthier – you whoreson!'

Both turned to face the doorway as a ridiculously large Seeq, even by the standards of the race, came slamming in through the saloon doors.

'Einar.'

Balthier sighed, deftly pulling a poison dagger from his hip sheath while remaining seated.

' I was hoping to at least get a drink before he showed up.'

'Who is Einar?'

Fran pulled free her own dagger, watching the Seeq approach, shoving Whitecap patrons aside in his wake.

The Seeq had one missing tusk, and tattoo's covered his blue hued skin.

' Remus's best favoured enforcer.'

Balthier breathed in aside as he rose to his feet, dagger hidden against his pants leg.

' Not my greatest admirer. Let me handle this. Just trust me and everything will be fine.'

Fran had no time to ask what he meant by that as he brushed passed her and walked confidently towards the Seeq, smiling a cordial greeting.

' Einar, fair tidings to you. I'm glad you're here, have you heard the news? Remus is dead.'

Despite the fact that the late pirate lords death was by his hand Balthier managed to contrive to sound grieved at the fact.

So convincingly, in fact, that the Seeq lowered the spiked cudgel he carried in confusion.

He was soon swept away on the honeyed tide of Balthier's words.

' I am right glad to see you, friend. I was there when he died and feared that under the circumstances I would be implicated as suspect in his death.'

To Fran's consternation and the growing fascination of those in the Whitecap, who were witness to the unfolding drama, Balthier slipped an arm around the obese Seeq's sloping shoulders and turned him to face away from Fran as he continued to wrap the Seeq in chains of silvered lies.

' You did kill him you silver-tongued bastard. I'll bash your brains in.'

Einar shook off Bathier's arm and the hume took a step back, a look of wide eyed alarm delicately concocted on his youthful face.

' Kill him? No. It's true that I was attempting to run, I freely admit that. Remus caught me though and when he went to take my life his gun misfired. He died alright and from nefarious circumstance, but not at my hand.'

'You lie.' The Seeq said, though a world of doubt came through in his tone.

' Yes, quite frequently, but not generally to men with spiked cudgels aimed at my head.'

Balthier remarked and received a few chuckles and snickers from the patrons of the Whitecap.

Einar looked out of his depth and sinking fast.

Balthier sighed theatrically, ' Einar, what would I possibly gain from killing Remus, my freedom from indentured service? Not likely when Nylous himself gave me to Remus. Most like I would get nothing for my troubles but the pleasure of my brains decorating your club. Hardly something I would aspire to, is it now?'

Fran, standing a little ways from the unfolding drama and currently ignored by all in the Whitecap, blinked in surprise.

Balthier had oft said he had worked only unwillingly for Remus but he had not said that he had been given, perhaps sold, to the pirate lord by the pirate king.

The self same king he was now intent on buying his freedom back from?

Had this Hume lied to her about his true intent as well as most everything else and if he had why for?

' If you din't kill the boss, then who did, huh?'

' Who indeed.'

Balthier made a show of giving this serious thought. Before shaking himself and seemingly changing the subject.

' Tell me, how is Ruthy?'

The Seeq's expression went from one of dazed confusion to sharp suspicion.

' Gone a four night. Not a one o'us seen 'er since you an' the boss went to that slaver auction.'

' Hmmm, is that true? Strange I could have sworn I saw her on the Purveema before the auction started.'

It was barely more than a murmur, but with it Balthier set the trap he had been baiting the whole time.

' Then you sayin' it was Ruthy an not you that killed the boss?'

Balthier shrugged as if it was of little consequence to him whether he was accused of murder or not.

'She had much more tangible assets to gain from Remus's untimely demise than I. Then again I'm like to say that, aren't I?'

' You a sly clever devil, Balthier, how do I know you ain't in league with the little seahag?'

Balthier allowed a cat grin to transform his sharp, clever fox-like features.

' Me-haps I am. Tell me do you know if Remus's caches have been raided?'

The Seeq, Einar, studied Balthier, swinging his cudgel not in an aggressive move but in thought.

' Three have. Not all.'

' Hmm, and pray tell, these caches, did I know the location of them? Or is it likely I could have discerned there location in such a short period of time?'

Einar snorted, ' Your good but you ain't no Remus. He would never 'ave trusted you with the location maps.'

' And yet somebody has been raiding Remus' caches of loot. If not me, his alleged murderer, then whom and why would they do such a thing, I wonder?'

Einar gripped his cudgel, ' To use the gil they'd raise from the sale of the loot to buy immunity from Nylous.'

Suddenly the Seeq sent his cudgel crashing down onto one of the empty bar tables, breaking the wood table in half.

Balthier jumped back, genuine alarm on his face for a second, Fran doubted anyone but she saw it however.

' That wicked sea vixen, it's 'er that done in the boss. She'd know how to find the caches alright.'

' Dear Ruthy would have better luck in buying her immunity then I from Nylous.'

'Aye, you're right there, boyo.'

Einar started to pull bits of the splintered table from his barbed cudgel.

' Still don't mean you ain't in on it. Not like you loved the boss none.' He narrowed beady eyes at Balthier.

'True enough, Einar. I guess you have little option but to watch us both, Ruthy and myself. I will be honest and say that I have the Strahl and have no intention of relinquishing her to you, but I have no objections to remaining here in Balfonheim if you require.'

' Whose the Rabbit?'

Einar demanded his eyes moving passed Balthier to Fran who stared back at him impassively.

' I beg your pardon?'

Balthier sounded both confused and offended on Fran's behalf in regards to the racial slur.

' You were sitting with that there Viera when I comes in, who is she?'

Balthier did not even hesitate, ' My bodyguard. I have suddenly found myself in need of one.'

The Seeq gave a snorting kind of laugh, thick and insulting to the ear.

' Bodyguard, don't look like the Bunny could protect a sapling from frost.'

Fran felt her hand move to the hilt of her dagger, she had good aim, she could throw it if need be.

As if sensing her mood Balthier stepped between her line of sight and the Seeq, blocking any potential shot.

' Be that as it may.' He said with a nonchalant shrug.

' She was amenable to assisting me and I was not in a position to find better. Though I would be careful what assumptions I make Einar, I'm sure you know what people say about assumptions.'

There were a few more titters of laughter from the patrons of the Whitecap.

Fran relaxed her stance and watched to see what either Balthier or Einar would do next.

Seemingly only now becoming aware of the rapt audience, Einar glanced about him quickly, and then glared at Balthier waving his cudgel in his face.

' The Strahl's not t'leave Balfonheim, you hear? If'n I 'ear that you gone from here Balthier, I'm going to be angry. Very angry. Unnastand?'

' Completely.' Balthier nodded contritely, though his stance was cocky.

Einar looked once more, suspiciously, at Fran, then turned his massive bulk around and waddled for the door.

Balthier, smirk unmoving, watched him go. Fran watched Balthier.

As soon as he was gone the Whitecap erupted in applause and Balthier, grinning broadly, gave a round of bows to the audience.

'Thank you, thank you. You are too kind.'

Fran strolled up to Balthier's side. ' You have much explaining to do pirate.'

Looking just slightly guilty Balthier nodded before turning another bow into a flourishing gesture towards the door.

'After you, my dear Fran.'


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five: Pirates, deception and an aristocratic education

'Are you quite mad pirate?'

Fran demanded once they were as safe from the prying eyes of the pirate town as they could be.

They had stepped down to the very cliffs of the Balfonheim coast and the roar of the surf below almost drowned out their words.

A strange expression passed over Balthier's face at her accusation and he turned sulkily to look out to sea.

'No.'

Fran was almost taken aback by the monosyllabic answer from the normally theatrically verbose young man.

She stepped back on her heels and waited for the explanation she expected would be forthcoming. She received none.

Without meeting her gaze Balthier started walking away from the sea view panorama outside the tavern and towards the main street of Balfonheim, and more worryingly, the Aerodrome.

' I have five thousand Gil at my disposal currently, is that sufficient recompense for your time?'

Fran frowned. ' You would be rid of me pirate?'

She did not know why the thought of this bothered her, except that she had made it her goal to study and learn all she could of Humes.

It was the only redemption she could find in this limbo existence she had condemned herself to.

Now she had found, after many years, a new and peculiar Hume to observe and study and he now wanted no part of it.

' I would think you would want rid of me, actually.'

Whereas his usual tone of voice was one of nonchalant disinterest, as if his own words mattered little compared to everything else he had to think about, Balthier now spoke in clipped, harsh tones.

'You are angry.'

Fran drew to a halt and Balthier pivoted on his heels to face her, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to keep the anger from his expression.

' Yes, but I wouldn't let it trouble you, dear Fran. It is a common symptom of mad men; we can be quite irrational. I would recommend you leave now. It does not do to tempt madmen in their rages.'

Fran studied him with all the dispassionate interest of the Viera. The veiled threat bothered her not a bit.

She already knew that Balthier was not the sort to lash out with his fists.

What did affect her, if only in terms of curiosity, was his obvious distress at her questioning his mental state.

'It bothers you that I think your actions foolhardy and irrational?'

He glared at her, 'Have you met many lunatics in your aimless wanderings may I ask?'

He bit out tugging savagely at his cuffs. So fiercely in fact that she thought he might tear the fine fabric.

Though it was not her wont to engage physical contact something about the peacock Hume tearing at his own cuffs affected her enough that she reached out and took hold of his wrists.

Instantly he went still and looked up at her with almost frightened eyes.

' I have met many men and women in my years, pirate, some mad in fact others only in the judgement of their peers.'

'And where do I rank in such illustrious company?'

He tried to affect his usual nonchalant humour and failed miserably.

Had she struck him with one of her arrows she could not have pierced him any deeper.

' I am not sure that you rank at all, as you put it. I have known you but weeks and that is barely time to commit you to memory should I choose to.'

Fran was honest. She had little purpose for lies of any kind, the gentle or the cruel.

Had she more skill and time for the everyday deceptions that pass for conversation among Humes she may have had a happier time of it in her forty-seven years among them.

Her words had unexpected affect on Balthier, he laughed and his usual good humour returned in a flood, washing away the honest emotion and replacing it with the more palatable veneer.

' Well, Fran, you have put me in my place, for sure.'

He pulled gently away from her grip on his wrists and started walking again.

' I suppose a man can never be judge of his own sanity, can he? In the end we are all judged daily in the eyes of our compeers, our competitors and even, gods forbid, our families.'

' Why did you cast aspersions of guilt upon this Ruthy? Who is she and what is it that you do here, Balthier?'

Fran decided to re-direct the conversation, she would not have him slip away from honest answers once more.

Balthier stopped and leaned against a wall as a dock worker, laden with sacks of flour, ran passed them up the street from Aerodrome to the dock.

' It matters to you, Fran, the plans of us short-lived and lowly Humes?'

' I would not ask if it did not.'

He smiled then, an oddly gentle smile, softer than his habitual smirk.

' No I suppose you would not.'

He brushed himself off as he pushed off from the wall and started towards the Aerodrome.

'Have you read the memoirs of Emperor Gramis the Great?'

Fran quirked an eyebrow, ' The grandfather of the current Archadian Emperor, yes I have.'

Balthier's smirk flickered into life, ' My condolences, I was forced to read it as a boy, the horrors of an aristocratic education. A very dull read considering the man was responsible for so much death and destruction. Only one line remains with me.'

'Which was?'

Fran noted for later quiet reflection that Balthier had just admitted to being born of the aristocracy, more than likely the Archadian gentry if his choice of reading material was any indication. It fitted with her own burgeoning suspicions.

' That a man, be he Emperor or pauper, should be his own historian. Never should a man allow his descendents to write about his exploits. Lest they get the facts wrong, or worse, discover the undesirable truths hidden in life.'

'And you would do this, write your own history?'

'And my own obituary when the time comes; I am the Leading Man after all.'

'Why? The dead care not.'

Balthier shook his head almost pityingly, as if Fran was too foolish, or simply too Viera, to understand.

' Perhaps your people's dead don't care, but Humes of any flavour, have a predisposition to worry over the manner, time and circumstances of their death.'

Balthier smirked and rolled his shoulders, craning his neck.

'We bury our corpses in the ground and rake over the dirt of their secrets as we count out our inheritance.'

'And you would take your secrets with you to the grave, Balthier?'

' Oh my ambitions are loftier than that, Fran my dear.'

He laughed trailing ringed fingers over the clefts in the brick work as they tarried outside of the Aerodrome.

' I intend to become a living fabrication, Fran. The Leading Man in whose image all leading men, fictional or real, shall be moulded here after.'

Fran raised one eyebrow speculatively. Balthier watched her almost slyly and she was of the opinion that there was in fact some little madness in him after all.

'In centuries to come, when you are back to your wanderings, people will speak of me as the Sky Pirate Balthier and talk of my adventures. No one will care from whence I came.'

' And no one will look beyond the fabrication to the truth beneath its veneer?'

Fran supplied and saw the flinching around those warm brown eyes; the almost feral fear that lurked there.

'Are all Viera so perceptive, or just you, Fran?'

Fran simply shrugged one shoulder elegantly. 'I cannot speak for all Viera.'

She was not sure she could speak for any.

She watched Balthier as he turned his ever roving attention to the imposing structure of the Aerodrome.

It did not seem to matter the city, any place that had an Aerodrome built it like the ancients built temples. Magnificent palaces to the Humes desire to harness the skies.

' I will be a sky pirate.'

Balthier murmured almost to himself, hands curling into fists. Coming to some internal decision, he turned to look Fran directly in the eye.

' I told you of my ambitions, Fran, now I would ask what yours are?'

Fran did not hesitate. ' I have no ambitions.'

Balthier nodded, a smile quirking his lips, as if this was the expected and desired answer.

He extended one ringed hand towards her.

' Then allow me to extend an invitation to you, dear Fran, and offer you the chance to share in mine own ambitions. You could be, perhaps, the first ever Viera sky pirate.'

Fran blinked staring at the hand extended towards her and up into the brown eyes that watched her with a confidence that dumbfounded her.

' I think that you are in need of a diversion to speed along your time, Fran, while you are sundered from your Viera wood. It would be my honour and privilege to provide you with such diversions.'

' Balthier! Son of a - '

A shouted curse and a loud crash of crates created just the distraction Fran had been unconsciously hoping for, unnerved for the first time in a very long time indeed, by a Hume's proposition.

'So much for setting the right mood; why is it I can never find a moments peace?'

Balthier's soft curse as he spied the gaggle of men lumbering towards their location drew Fran to complete attention.

She drew her dagger and regretted leaving the bow on board the Strahl.

She may suspect Balthier of eccentricity in the extreme, perhaps a strange madness even, but he was the first Hume to catch her interest in many years and he was right, she was sorely in need of diversion.

Decision made she prepared to fight alongside Balthier who pulled his Altair free from its holster and fired a shot into the crowd of six armed men that swarmed towards them.

Briefly before the battle was met, Fran wondered if the life of a sky pirate would always be so tediously violent?


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six: Escape from Balfonheim: Enter Nono the renegade Moogle

Fran fought close quarters, kicking, slashing with claws and dagger both at the ring of men, some Humes some Bangaa that were determined, for some reason hardly relevant at the moment, to rend Balthier limb from limb.

At the periphery of her awareness she sensed Balthier. He was staying back from the main fighting, a sensible stratagem, he was the target after all.

Occasionally she would hear the muted crack of his Altair firing.

The Hume had good aim, she would grant him that and he did not waste his shots.

Instead of trying to pick off their attackers Balthier used his gun intelligently firing into the stack of beer barrels lining one side of the alley.

Obliterating the ropes that held the barrels in place and causing one particularly vicious Bangaa to be crushed under the weight of beer barrels four foot tall and almost that again in diameter.

Deciding that it served no purpose to continue this futile dance Fran whispered the incantation for Thunder and released the shock wave straight into the nearest foe. He fell and the others scattered.

Fran felt strong, blunt fingers curl around her upper arm, ' Time to be off, wouldn't you say?'

Shaking off Balthier's touch she ran towards the Aerodrome as it seemed to have been Balthier's destination all along, the pirate at her heels.

They ran through the crowded Aerodrome, both vaulting over passenger luggage, as well as a small infant Hume playing marbles on the floor, and across the expanse of the foyer to the hangars.

Balthier commanded the Strahl's hatch to open by remote control and Fran led the way up the retractable stair before it had finished descending.

She heard Balthier's curse as a poison arrow pierced the hull of the Strahl inches from his head.

'Einar's men?'

Fran asked as they took their seats and hurriedly started emergency de-clamping and take-off procedures.

Balthier shook his head. ' Ruthy's if I'm not mistaken.'

Fran felt her eyebrows rise, ' The plot thickens.'

The Strahl lurched upwards, wings unfolding and engines revving, there was a grinding tearing sound of sundered metal as the ship pulled from the docking bay with one of the clamps still attached.

Balthier groaned in annoyance.

' That is going to ruin the paintwork.'

Fran glanced curiously at Balthier who was intent on getting them out of the Aerodrome before the sky hatch closed.

Balthier forced the Strahl through the dangerously narrow opening with wings retracted.

The engines roared their protest as the ship tried to power upwards with wings furled and a heavy clamp, much like a trailing anchor, trailing from the hull.

' I know, I know, I'll make it up to you my girl.'

Balthier crooned to the ship as he slammed a fist down onto the control panel, opened the thrusters full throttle and snapped open the wings.

The Strahl lurched upwards and away with whip-lash inducing speed.

' We are like to attract attention as we are.'

Fran pointed out once Balfonheim was merely a blip on the horizon and the cerulean blue ocean ran forever underneath them.

' True, though I'm more worried about our lack of engines, myself.'

Fran turned to look at him sharply and then immediately to the screens and dials in front of her.

He was right they had lost both engines and were flying only by the grace of the glossair rings.

Safe enough while they cruised through the skies but it could mark trouble when they tried to land.

' You have broken the ship.'

She was indignant. The Strahl was a fine craft and deserved better and gentler treatment than her current captain afforded her.

Balthier opened his mouth for instant retort, ' I have not –'

Fran's ears twitched and she raised a hand to silence his words, stretching her hearing to encompass everything she might expected from an airship to find the one thing that had caught her attention.

'...kupo'

Fran rose smoothly from her seat and walked to the back of the cabin towards the rest of the ship.

She barely registered it when Balthier flipped the controls over to autopilot and followed her.

'...fine how's your father this is, kupo.'

They had arrived in the storage hold. Fran raised one hand for Balthier to remain silent by the door and pointed one clawed finger towards one of the over head compartments.

'...have to pick a pirates ship now, wouldn't I? Bad Kupo all the way.'

Fran swept forward and wrenched down the door to the overhead compartment.

Something small and white and green fell out of the compartment before righting itself with its own stumpy wings.

' Eeeep! kupo, kupo!'

In a blur of motion, orange pom-pom plume waving like a lure the Moogle, for that was what the creature was, shot across the cargo hold towards Balthier.

Balthier reacted the way one would if a large panicked flying object came hurtling towards their head.

He ducked and brought one arm up to swat the thing away.

Through sheer luck his arm connected with the Moogle's little body sending the hapless creature hurtling towards the metal plated wall of the hold.

Hitting the wall pom-pom first the Moogle slid down to the floor and was still and quiet on the grated floor.

Fran lifted her gaze from the still form to Balthier who looked as shocked as she had ever seen him; eyes wide and drawing quick breaths.

' Is it dead?'

Crouching down Fran scooped up the limp form, its bright orange pom-pom bent at an angle and its green frock dishevelled.

'No, merely stunned.'

Balthier came to stand by her side and looked down at the Moogle incredulously,

' What was it doing in there?'

' It appears we have a stowaway.'

'...ku...po?'

Slowly the Moogle started to regain consciousness, large limpid eyes fluttering open in fright when it - or rather he - Fran thought, saw the two of them looking down upon him.

It was at that moment that the Strahl lurched sharply forcing Fran to catch hold of the flighty Moogle by the back of his frock and brace herself against the wall with the other arm.

'Oh, right, somebody should probably be piloting the Strahl.'

Balthier muttered distractedly still staring at the Moogle, Fran gave him a long look and he seemed to get his wits about him.

' And that somebody is me of course, leading man and all that.'

He turned and hurried back to the main cabin, leaving Fran alone with their stowaway.

Moogle and Viera regarded each other in silence for a moment.

' Please don't eat me, kupo.'

Fran blinked, ' Eat you?'

'Yes, kupo.'

Fran opened her mouth to question why this Moogle would think she would ever want to eat him or any other Moogle when she heard Balthier call to her from the main cabin.

Clasping squirming Moogle under one arm she made her way to the cabin.

' So what's the tale behind our stowaway, another Moogle merchant trying to sell us his wares?'

Fran was about to say that she had no idea, except that the Moogle seemed mentally impaired, when the Moogle himself spoke up.

' I am NO merchant, kupo!'

Wriggling free of Fran the Moogle fluttered between the back of Balthier's chair and the door of the cabin, currently being blocked by Fran.

'I am Nono a proud proponent of the ideology of Kupo, I'll have you know.'

Seeing the blank looks both Fran and Balthier were giving the Moogle, the later having twisted around in his seat to stare at the fluttering ball of fluff, the Moogle decided to elaborate.

'I'm a renegade Moogle, kupo, on the run from the rampant materialism that is destroying the rest of my brethren, Kupo.'

Fran came into the cabin and sat down in the co-pilot's chair, suddenly feeling the need to be seated.

She continued to stare levelly at the Moogle.

She and Balthier exchanged looks and he cleared his throat awkwardly, 'The rampant materialism of your race?'

'Yes, kupo.'

'So you are, in fact, not a merchant of some kind?'

' No, kupo, I detest all forms of capitalist endeavour. I believe we should live in a Gil free world, Kupo.'

Balthier looked to Fran who looked back at him blankly. This was a new experience for her also.

'A Gil free world, you say?'

Balthier's tone was very light and his lips twitched with suppressed laughter,

' Tell me then, if you would be so kind, how would one go about buying goods and services, without some form of currency?'

The Moogle, Nono, smiled as if pleased to have an interested audience for his philosophy.

' A good question, kupo, and one I will gladly answer. In the golden age of Kupo, all races of Ivalice would trade in goods and services through barter and trade of services in kind.'

Balthier was forced to turn back to face front and steer the Strahl for a moment.

Fran could not take her eyes off the strange Moogle.

' Trade of services in kind?'

She was surprised to hear her own voice posing the question as in her peripheral vision she observed Balthier's shoulders shake with suppressed laughter.

'Yes, kupo, you scratch my back I scratch yours. People would trade what they had with their neighbours in friendship. There will be no war, no greed, we shall want for nothing in the Golden Age of Kupo.'

Nono had his hands clasped together in rapturous self-belief; Eyes brimming over with the fervour of the true-believer.

' Why do you keep saying kupo in that way?'

Fran had noticed that the Moogle sometimes put an odd inflection on the word habitually spoken by all Moogles.

When he spoke of the 'golden age of Kupo' the syllables were elongated, kup – O becoming kup-poo.

' Not kupo, Kupo. Kup-poo. A difference.' Nono enunciated carefully.

The Strahl wobbled in the air as beside her Balthier started to wheeze unhealthily, his face reddening and body wracked with silent, shaking gales of laughter. His hands grasped the controls in a death-lock.

'Are you alright, kupo?'

Balthier nodded his head vigorously, 'Yes,' he squeaked out, swallowing convulsively and pulling one had free to waft at the air by his face.

' Forgive me, it's my allergies, please continue.'

Satisfied with that explanation Nono turned his fervently serious gaze back to Fran,

'An easy mistake to make. Kup-poo is a new philosophy and the greeting of Kup-O is old in our tongue. It is all in the pronunciation.'

The Moogle paused thoughtfully,

' Kupo, now that I think on it we Moogles do have a rather limited lexicon, kupo.'

The Strahl went into a sharp nose dive as Balthier collapsed across the control panel in uncontrollable fits of laughter.

Fran was forced to divert flight control of the ship to her terminal to stop them plunging into the ocean south of Bhujerba.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven: The Golden Rule of Piracy; ask no questions and tell no lies

Once Balthier had calmed down enough to take back command of the Strahl, Fran having no idea what their heading was, after all, she decided that now was time to press him for answers.

' Ruthy's men attacked us in Balfonheim. Why?'

' Because they were in the Whitecap and overheard my little altercation with Einar.'

' And you knew that they were there, just as you knew Einar would find you there.'

It was not a question, merely a recitation of fact.

Fran suspected that little this pirate did was either whim or accident despite the impression to the contrary he worked hard to maintain.

Next to her Balthier was uncharacteristically silent. He looked out at the wispy clouds scudding past a slight frown touching his features.

When Balthier finally deigned to speak it was to address the Moogle stowaway.

' Nono, how would you like to travel with myself and Fran from now on?'

' Kupo?'

'Consider it an unparalleled opportunity to proselytes to your fellow Moogles, spreading the word of Kup-poo wherever we make port.'

' Kupo!'

' In exchange, as your philosophy is all about fair exchange, is it not? You will keep watch over the Strahl and help with its maintenance at times when Fran and myself are required elsewhere.'

' Kupo, you would let me stay?'

The Moogle was all but buzzing in the air by the passenger seats, hands clasped together hopefully.

' Nono, after our revelatory chat before I can barely stand the thought of parting with you.'

Balthier's smirk was sly, his features less that of a fox and suddenly snake-like to Fran's eyes.

' I think you'll fit right in.' Balthier purred.

' A revolutionary Moogle, an outcast Viera and a pirate on the make, yes, quite the crew we shall be.'

' Kupo?'

Nono looked slightly confused by the sweet dripping venom, slow and soothing as honey, sharp as razor blades to Fran's delicate ears, that rolled from Balthier's lips.

' There is just one rule,'

Balthier continued, sliding his eyes sideways to meet Fran's gaze, his hands on the controls of the Strahl steady but his grip tight. Fran suspected that he spoke more to her than Nono.

'What rule, kupo?'

' Ask no questions, receive no lies.'

Balthier said briskly, swinging the Strahl in a starboard arc and angling towards the city state of Dalmasca, an oasis in the sands.

' We don't lie to each other, ever, and we respect each other's privacy as sacrosanct. The past is buried, the future is what we make of it and the present is to be enjoyed.'

Fran found voice to speak up, recognising, though not understanding, the implicit rebuke in his tone.

'So you will not answer me?'

' I have answered every direct question you have set me, dear Fran, more than can be said for yourself.'

Fran could not help but feel somewhat concerned that he would not tell her what convoluted plan he followed seemingly with every word and deed.

Then she wondered why it concerned her so. She was but an observer, a passive participant in his drama, involved only so far as she chose to be.

Fran cocked her eyebrow and turned in her seat to face him directly, though he remained facing outwards towards the Westersands.

' Very well, Balthier, I ask you this, do you intend to stir war among this Ruthy and Einar?'

There was a pause Balthier turned slowly towards her his expression oddly whimsical but his eyes burned with an angry intensity at odds with his countenance.

' No Fran, I _intend_ to win my freedom and I'm committed to doing what ever I must to achieve my ends.'

Fran considered these words, weighed their likely consequences in her mind and the probability that following Balthier along this mysterious course he had chosen for himself might result in harm to her.

'And your freedom lies in Rabanastre?'

She inquired lightly watching the desert city rise up from the flat gold of the dunes.

Balthier relaxed slightly his smirk twitching his lips as he realised she would neither abandon him now or attempt to hinder him.

' Not quite, but one can find all manner of useful things at the Bazaar, including one hopes, replacement parts for light airship engines.'

'We are like to crash upon landing.'

Balthier contrived to look offended, ' You wound me, Fran, so little faith in my piloting abilities.'

'It was your piloting abilities that caused the engines to fail as it is.'

Fran studied the screens and dials for any signs of further difficulties and Balthier began their descent, passing in a wide circle over the city to get rid of excess speed.

' I am beginning to think, Fran, that you are the sort of woman who must always have the last word.'

He murmured distractedly as the glossair rings cut out and the Strahl remained aloft on built up momentum alone, aloft in a tenuous moment before gravity caught up to it.

' This bothers you Balthier?'

Balthier manoeuvred the craft towards the docking clamps of the aerodrome with a deft touch that Fran could not help but admire.

' Not in the least, Fran, I find myself becoming increasingly taken with your voice.'

He flashed her a smile, one brow cocked in suggestion, Fran found herself surprised to discover that her own lips wished to return that slight smile.

She wondered if the gleam in his eyes belonged to him or was merely a reflection of the amusement she felt within herself.

It was as they disembarked the Strahl leaving the enthusiastic Nono to guard the ship and fill out the paperwork that Balthier spoke up once more.

' You know, the proper response to my last statement would be for you to compliment me on my voice as well, tis only polite.'

He looked at her pointedly as they came out onto the main foyer of the Rabanastre aerodrome.

Fran shook her fall of hair back from her shoulders, adjusted the hand axe that hung from her hip and finally deigned to meet his eyes.

'I shall remember that for future reference, pirate.'

She started off towards the exit, pleased when Balthier followed at her heels, his chuckles pleasant to her hearing.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight: Dalmasca before the fall; Mark hunting and other trivialities

' Seven thousand Gil?'

Balthier flopped bonelessly down into the alcove by the steps leading down into the Bazaar. He dropped his head into his hands theatrically.

' I shall be the first pirate in history bank-rupt before I have even begun.'

Fran stood beside him and watched the gaudily dressed citizens of Rabanastre go about their business.

They all seemed in such a rush, despite the dry, itching heat that radiated from the city's every surface.

The sights, smells and sounds of the Bazaar filled her with a paradoxical delighted revulsion.

' Seven thousand Gil is not so much. You told me you had five thousand on your person.'

'Which I was rather hoping to remain in possession of.'

He quipped dryly before hoisting himself to his feet.

He plucked at his shirt sleeves in discomfort, as always he was fastened up and smothered in clothing.

The waistcoat today a dull red the colour of burnt embers, enlivened by swirls of gold thread.

' You know, I am not the sort to disparage a place based solely on personal preference, but I think this city is one of my least favourite places in all of Ivalice. If it wasn't so strategically placed I'd sooner never come here again.'

Fran looked down at her wilting companion as they forged through the throng of Rabanastran's, tourists, merchants and sundry others towards the Tavern, Fran observed its name upon the glowing sign. _The Sandsea._

Noticing the direction of her gaze Balthier smirked,

' Yes, I know, not the most imaginative lot, these Dalmascan's.'

The inside of the Tavern was almost as crowded as the streets outside. Fran did not enjoy it. Although she gave no sign of it apart from an errant twitching of her left ear.

' What is your plan?'

For he surely had one. It was perhaps the reason she remained with him, Fran had decided, having had time to consider this over the last few days.

He was one of the most single-mindedly focused Humes she had ever come across. The fact that his actions and motivations made little discernable sense did not detract from this fact.

Balthier gestured vaguely towards a crowded notice board against the Tavern's back wall, while he shouldered his way through the three person thick crowd lining the bar.

Fran strolled towards the board, ignoring the wide eyed looks she received from its patrons, she had forty-plus years of practice at this after all.

It was a Mark Hunters notice board. So this was his plan, to take up a Hunt to raise funds?

A reasonable stratagem. Fran, herself, had at one time or another, belonged to most of the Hunter Guilds though she had not taken a hunt in quite some time.

'Anything interesting?'

Balthier handed her a cold drink in a condensation wet glass and sipped from his own tankard.

Fran was pleased to note that he had not ordered her an alcoholic beverage. She had little tolerance for ales of any kind.

'That would depend upon your rank.'

She said trying the drink. It tasted of mint and seemed almost to freeze her mouth, oddly pleasant as her throat was raw from the desert winds.

Balthier shrugged, ' What's the one that comes after Brave Companion?'

Fran quirked an eyebrow, ' Riskbreaker.'

Balthier nodded, ' That is my rank then. Truthfully I find these Marks terribly tedious. Really, these petitioners should try taking care of their own problems.'

'If that is so I am surprised you chose to rise so far among the rankings?'

Balthier took a long draught of his ale, ' Little choice in the matter. I left my home with no more than the shirt on my back, a man has to earn his bread and water somehow.'

Fran nodded, just as she had so very long ago. A wide-eyed and frightened child, in truth, unprepared for the Hume world and its dangers. She had learned quickly and she thought that he had too.

' I believe I have accreditation as a Knight of the Round, though it may be out dated. Is there a Guild house in Rabanastre?'

Balthier was smiling at her oddly amused, ' A Knight of the Round? Yes, I think that suits you.'

Fran frowned just a little, unsure how to construe that comment. Was it meant as flirtation?

Balthier had not made any overtures before. A relief as she grew tired of disabusing young Humes of their amorous ambitions towards her.

' We shall look for Marks at Riskbreaker Rank, to be on the safe side.' She said firmly.

Balthier smiled smoothly, laid down his empty tankard on a free table and bowed to her.

'As you say, Fran. Lead on, fair Knight.'

Several hours later they made their way across the dunes of the Estersand and back towards Rabanastre and the petitioner for the Hunt they had just successfully vanquished.

' I do not understand the sense of this licensing system.'

Fran carried part of the wyrm's carapace across her shoulders, Balthier held the rest aloft following behind her, as if holding the train of her skirt.

' Nor I, truth be told, but I have it on good authority that it will become the norm. One must have a licence to wield any form of weaponry, wear armour or magically imbued accessories.'

'And the use of magicks? This too is to be so regulated?'

' One would imagine.'

'Odd.'

Fran wondered why such a system would be implemented now.

Though in retrospect the better regulation of the use of magick and weaponry might do something to curb the rise in banditry across the lands of Ivalice.

' It's all due to the war of course.' Balthier continued in conversational tones.

' What war is this?'

Fran was not aware of any open conflict among the rival powers of Ivalice.

Though the duelling empires of Rozarria and Archadia remained at loggerheads, two snarling dogs, teeth bared as they squared up over the juicy bones of Ivalice's resources.

' The war we will all be thrown into soon enough. The Empire will be all over this region within the year, mark my words.'

Fran could not turn back to look at him without dropping the carapace, the proof of their success, so instead she infused her words with more interest than she would ordinarily allow.

'Why so sure?'

Balthier's cynical snickers reached her ears.

'Because of this new Licensing System. Dalmasca and Nabradia are barely large enough to support a full army, but they have citizenry enough to raise a vigorous and spirited defence of their autonomy should they need to.'

' And a system of licensing the use of offensive spells and the wielding of weaponry will limit the numbers of people able to fight, should the Empire invade. This is what you mean?'

Fran wondered at what deeper knowledge Balthier drew on to make such a leap in deduction from a relatively innocuous new policy to prevent lawlessness to a method of stealth warfare.

'Precisely. House Solidor excels at this very type of warfare. Insidious, subtle, and not a drop of blood spilt until they deem it time.'

Fran considered what she knew of the political landscape of Ivalice,

' Dalmasca and Nabradia are precariously situated, too close to the warring empires to be ignored. Their annexation by either power would be sought by either Archadia or Rozzaria.'

' Hmmm, a fine time to start a career as a pirate. The pickings will be bountiful.'

Balthier's tone was mocking, edged with spite, though she suspected that the deeper sting of those words was directed towards himself, for what reason she could merely guess at.

'You are cynical for one so young.'

He laughed more freely this time, groaning at the end as he shifted his weight under the heavy carapace of the wyrm.

' I prefer to consider myself a realist.'

Fran did not say anything further as they returned from the Eastern Gates into the city and collected their reward from the petitioner.

Returning to the Bazaar Balthier was able to haggle the Seeq down from Seven thousand Gil to five thousand and they returned to the aerodrome to affect repairs to the Strahl.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine: Sleep the Universal Equaliser

'You're good at this.'

Fran looked up from her ministrations on the engines of the Strahl, her elbows slicked in fuel and grease.

She quirked an eyebrow at him.

' You are surprised?'

'Pleased would be closer to the mark. I fly well but have little patience when it comes to repairs.'

Fran returned to her work aware distantly that Balthier had moved from his perch on the Strahl's boarding stair and returned back into the ship.

She worked in silent concentration for an unspecified period of time, having little use for marking its eternal passage Fran had never owned a time piece.

Eventually she felt satisfied that she had done all she could to install the new parts correctly and repair the hole in the hull caused by the Balfonheim docking clamp they had removed.

She went in search of Balthier. She had grown accustomed to his presence, seeking him out now that he had left her to her own devices.

Had she any wish of that, at the present time, she would have left him to his adventures in Balfonheim.

She located him by the soft sounds of his breathing, slightly hitched, and the rustling sounds of moving cloth against leather upholstery.

When she found him slumped down in the pilot's chair, feet braced against the control panel it was immediately obvious that he was asleep.

Sleeping Humes had a strange and irrational affect on Fran.

It had been a sleeping Hume alone and lost in Golmore Jungle that had been the impetus for Fran's decision to leave Eruyt, had it not?

Moving as a ghost she stepped closer to him and saw that he had discarded his vest and wore only his shirt sleeves.

As she had suspected the confining tightness of the vest was hardly comfortable to sleep in.

To Fran sleeping Humes represented everything about them that had driven her, against her better judgement, her breeding, and her duty to the village and the Jungle that had raised her, to walk among their number.

They were so utterly and completely helpless in sleep.

As clever, sly and confident as Balthier was awake and lucid he was as a babe in oblivious sleep.

She could strike him dead in a hundred different ways, right now, and he would never have chance to know it was her who sent him to his eternal slumber far too early. Yet he did not even stir.

A Viera would have heard her approach and awoken instantly ready to defend herself.

As too, most like, would a Bangaa or a Seeq. Even the Moogles had been gifted by nature more natural defences against would be predators than Humes.

Despite all their physical disadvantages, their short-lived frailties, it was Humes that dominated the lands of Ivalice, Humes that had found ways of turning weakness into opportunity to learn and create.

Viera did not create, as the Wood provided all they could need. Viera did not learn for they were born knowing the Wood would provide all answers.

Humes were offered no such certainties. And thus, Fran would forever be infatuated with them.

Allowing herself to smile on the Hume she found herself thusly tethered to in the here and now, as he was safely asleep and unawares, Fran made her decision.

Slipping gracefully into the co-pilots seat, settling herself in mimickry of his own slouched position, she closed her eyes to join him in slumber, the one place where the difference in their race mattered not one bit.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten: Delayed Satisfaction; answers forthcoming

'Uggn. Remind not to do that again, will you Fran?'

Balthier stood up and stretched out his cramped limbs as much as he could within the confines of the cabin.

He rolled his shoulders, his neck, and flexed his spine, kicking out the kinks in his legs.

' I have a perfectly serviceable bed in my cabin, yet I choose to fall asleep in a chair?'

He shook his head in mock despair.

' No doubt my hair is a state also?'

Fran had awoken at the very moment Balthier stirred.

Her Viera hearing ensuring such, an her instincts honed to a razor point for self preservation, so that when Balthier opened his eyes it appeared as if she were merely sitting quietly waiting for him to regain consciousness.

' Your hair is fine.'

Fran deigned to speak as she watched, distantly amused, as he fused with his short golden brown hair.

He shot her a look which was equal parts boyish embarrassment for having been caught out in his vanity and sly amusement.

' Fine? Merely fine. No that simply will not do. The Leading Man cannot simply be fine. He must be exemplary in all things.'

Fran said nothing and waited in patient stillness for the vain pirate to commence and finish his complicated grooming process.

' Do we have a new heading?'

She inquired mildly when he returned in fresh shirt and vest, this one a high-collared, elaborately patterned velvet of green and gold with a leather back and lacings.

Distantly she wondered how he managed to fasten the back laces on his own.

'Hmm? Oh, a heading.'

Balthier looked up almost startled from where he had been fiddling distractedly with the controls.

He did not speak again for a number of heartbeats.

'Balthier?'

He had begun to drum his fingers distractedly against the control panel.

' Remus was too powerful. He owned his own Purveema and three airships, not including the Strahl, fully manned. Nylous could do nothing against him, though the pirate king certainly feared Remus's growing power.'

Balthier's words all but tripped over each other in his haste to get them out.

His gaze danced over the screens and dials as he continued to pound out a disparate melody with his fingers on the controls.

'He had reason to fear, Remus wished to use my brains, and certain other aspects of my upbringing, to wrest control from Nylous.'

Balthier's hesitancy of speech was telling when he mentioned his upbringing. Clearly this was something he was reluctant to speak on.

' Remus is -_was_ – involved in a nasty dispute with his former mistress Ruthy, a pirate of the seas. Open warfare between Remus's crews and Ruthy's would eliminate any threat to Nylous's control and afford him rights of succession to the spoils left over.'

Fran looked at Balthier nodding her head even as her eyebrows rose in understanding.

' So you contrive to stir such open battle between Ruthy and Remus's followers as the gift you owe the pirate king for your freedom?'

' Yes. The seeds are sown. Einar is half convinced I'm in league with Ruthy, Ruthy's people know I'm not. Ruthy will come for me, seeming to prove our alliance in Einar's eyes.'

Fran was, in a dispassionate way, impressed by Balthier's deviousness. However certain parts of the plan remained far from secure.

' How will you prove to Nylous that you acted on his behalf? Why should he reward you when he stands to gain even if he gives you nothing?'

Balthier sighed theatrically.

' Life is filled with uncertainty, dear Fran, that is the reason for its appeal. I doubt anyone would care to live their allotted time through if all things were certain from the outset. I know I should die of boredom were it so.'

But Fran would not be distracted by witticism. She would chase down the truth to satisfy her own curiosity.

' Einar said that you were gifted to Remus by the pirate king, this is true?'

Balthier hesitated, trying to avoid her questing gaze. He could not.

'Yes. It is true.'

' Then it stands to reason that Nylous gave you to Remus, so that you may do exactly what you have done? Remove a dangerous threat to his powerbase.'

Balthier was frowning, 'You are too clever by far Fran.'

Fran studied him curiously. He squirmed like a boy under her scrutiny trying to avoid her gaze.

His fingers finally stilled on the control panel.

' A deadly gambit to play and be so played for one so young as you. It would seem you have much to lose and precious little to gain in this endeavour.'

She was taken aback by the brilliance of his smile, dazzling in its careless vibrancy.

' Perhaps, Fran, but the Leading Man lives for just this sort of affair. The higher the stakes the greater the reward, and really, who can put value on one's own freedom?'

Before Fran could formulate a reply Balthier came to life, flicking switches, adjusting dials and beginning procedures for departure.

Grinning like a lunatic he turned to her, ' Fran, let's fly!'


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven: Ruth by name, ruthless by nature

Snatches of memory rose up in Fran as she dreamed, trapped in fever. Her mind tormenting her with images of the recent past.

They had barely left the deserts of Dalmasca behind them when their small craft had been ambushed by a larger airship, black and silver and festooned with a skull and crossbones motif across its hull.

They had implemented immediate evasive manoeuvres but that had been exactly what their enemy had wanted.

Flying low and close to the ocean they had been easy prey to the pirate galleon waiting for them in the centre of the trap.

The cannonade fire had punctured the right wing and Balthier, cursing a blue streak like a true pirate, had been forced to activate the emergency water landing gear on the Strahl and they had been as a lame duck on the choppy ocean's surface.

Just before the Strahl's hatch was forcibly opened by the pirates from the galleon Balthier had turned to Fran eyes serious and face pale, real fear evident on his features before the sailors breached the cabin.

' Fran, they don't want you, just play dumb and you should be fine. Ruthy's a pure sadist, she'll never let you go if she thinks you know something.'

Then there was no more time for words. Armed Humes with outlandish tattoo's and shaven heads had swamped the cabin.

Nono had hidden under the pilots chair and escaped notice. Fran and Balthier were not so fortunate.

In short order they had been dragged onto the deck of the Galleon where a woman with raven black hair threaded with grey at the temples and gimlet eyes, stood proud, dressed in a man's britches and shirt, a tricorn hat perched on her head.

' Well, well, master Balthier, quite the dapper fifth column aren't you?'

Balthier, forced to his knees with his arms twisted in a huge pirate's vice like grip behind his back, nevertheless managed a charming smile and jovial greeting.

' Lady Ruth, ravishing as ever, I see.'

Ruth, or Ruthy for it must be she, inclined her head just slightly towards one of her henchmen who crowded close to Balthier.

Taking this as some form of assent the henchmen viciously punched Balthier in the gut.

As Balthier struggled to regain his breath Ruthy strode towards him and crouched in front of him, almost gently stroking his face.

' Balthier,' she all but cooed his name, ' tis not that you killed Remus, hellsbells I'd have helped you with that had you asked.'

She raised her head and grinned broadly, raking her dark gaze over her men who began a dutiful, mechanic laughter in response to the prompt.

Ruthy returned her attention to Balthier, ' But did you honestly think I'd let you get away with framing me?'

' Frame you? Never.' Balthier choked out.

Ruthy raised her eyebrows. When she spoke her tone was chillingly mild.

' Einar destroyed one of my ships en route from Rozzia and filled to the keel with loot. Came out of the sky all guns blasting, lost twenty men and at least twenty thousand Gil of treasure.'

' I knew nothing of that.' Balthier said in all honesty.

He had time to brace himself for the meaty fist that struck him across the right side of his jaw after another subtle signal from Ruthy.

Balthier spat blood and blinked to clear his vision, ' My dear Lady Ruth,' he drawled smiling even as his bottom lip split,

' did you go to all this trouble just to give me a beating? Or was there something more important you wanted?'

Ruthy laughed, a rich throaty chuckle that Fran knew from careful observation Hume men were inclined to like. It was an alluring sound that rang with inherent danger.

' Ah, Balthier, always the sly one.'

Her amusement quickly drained from her face, leaving a cold mask, her eyes merciless.

' Tis a pity your clever tongue won't save you this time.'

Like a spring uncoiling she rose to her feet and snapped her fingers.

Instantly the knot of burly, armed, men surrounding Balthier closed in.

' Beat the sass out of him but don't do any permanent damage, he's a useful little cur.'

Ruthy said off-handedly her gaze fixing on Fran.

Ruthy prowled over to where Fran was being guarded by two pirates even as Balthier was roughly dragged across the deck and down into the bowels of the ship.

'What have we here? A Viera?'

Even with the door to the deck closed Fran's fine hearing could hear the faint sounds of the vicious beating Ruthy's men were doling out to Balthier.

Fran remained at her most placid and impassive under Ruthy's scrutiny.

She understood what Balthier had meant when he said to play 'dumb'.

It was a strategy she had used herself with hostile humes many a time. They oft mistook her lack of reaction to external stimulus as a lack of wits.

' It won't work you know.'

Ruthy smiled like a snake, confidence and cold knowledge dripping from her clean, educated tones.

' A reasonably good idea, play dumb and hope that I and my men would think you nothing better than an animal, Balthier's exotic pet. Sadly I am no fool like Einar.'

Ruthy snapped her fingers abruptly right in front of Fran's face, but she did not blink nor show any reaction. Fran was no amateur.

'Excellent.' Ruthy murmured.

' You are the one who dispatched my men in Balfonheim? You fight well. What is your relationship with Balthier?'

Fran remained impassive, silent, she did not even twitch when she caught the unmistakable whiff of Mist and heard the scream of pain as Ruthy's men used magick against Balthier.

Ruthy sighed, not so much angered as merely put out that Fran would not speak.

' Very well, be difficult if it suits you, it matters naught to me.'

Ruthy looked to her men that remained on the deck.

' Take her down to the hold, let her be reunited with Balthier.' Ruthy cocked her eyebrow at Fran,

' Perhaps that will loosen her tongue?'

Fran said nothing as she was roughly pushed forward towards the stairway down to the hold.

She offered no resistance as the men pushed her down the stairs and into the small, dark cargo hold of the vessel.

The smell of Mist was thicker down in the hold and almost instantly her eyes alighted on Balthier's still form as Ruthy's men, hands smeared with Balthier's blood, stepped away from him to look at her.

They had stripped away his vest and shirt and proceeded to pummel him about the head and torso first with fists, some adorned with brass knuckles, and then with fire, thunder and blizzard spells.

His upper body bore the brunt of red and weeping burns and blisters, his arms still prickled with ice crystals and the tremors that shook his wiry frame stood testament to the lightening shocks of thunder through his bones.

Though one of his eyes was swollen shut, a nasty cut bisecting one sharply defined eyebrow and his other eye was simply closed, Fran could tell from the way he lay, abused muscles tensed, that Balthier was still conscious.

Blood matted in his mussed hair and his mouth was a ruin, he had likely lost some teeth.

A cut sliced across the bridge of his nose and the indentation of finger nails was clearly visible around his throat.

Yet Fran noticed that the fingers of his right hand, the one with all the rings, were crossed.

'What we got t'do wit' dis one?'

One of the sea pirates lumbered towards Fran reaching out with a meaty fist to touch her ears.

Humes had such obsession with Viera ears.

Fran did not flinch even when his hand closed around her left ear, squeezing painfully.

'Let go of her, I did not give you permission to touch the Viera. Yet.'

Ruthy strolled down into the hold, already beginning a Cure spell which she directed towards Balthier.

The man holding Fran's ear let go. Balthier moaned softly as the green glow of the spell encompassed him but did little to alleviate his suffering.

With a glance Ruthy commanded her men to manacle Fran to one of the wooden support posts holding up the deck above the hold.

Ruthy crossed the hold to reach Balthier. Fran did not react, it would not do to act prematurely.

Ruthy sat down on the ground next to Balthier and stroked a black satin gloved hand down his flank.

Fran noticed for the first time, now that Balthier was not trussed up in shirt and vest, how painfully thin he was.

His ribs stood out in sharp relief as Ruthy drove her hand forcibly down his side.

' I know you've got something nasty cooking in that head of yours, Balthier. A clever boy like you, the runaway son of Archades greatest scientific mind no less, you would always have a fail-safe plan for just such occasions as these.'

'Some lovely little sinecure to offer me in exchange for your life? Perhaps a partnership against Einar? Or maybe you will offer to advocate on my behalf with Nylous?'

Ruthy brushed a satin gloved thumb over one particularly painful burn that traced the top of Balthier's hip to disappear into his trousers.

Balthier flinched as she rubbed the open wound.

' But there's one thing you failed to consider, dear boy, that perhaps I wish to see you suffer far more than I care to make peace with Nylous.'

Ruthy cast another Cure spell and directed it towards Balthier, who was forced to open his eyes as his wounds began to heal.

The spell was not strong enough to heal him completely, or much at all, but it was enough that he was able to lever himself up to face Ruthy.

Balthier managed the faintest ghost of his usual cocky grin, even though one eye was swollen closed.

When he spoke his voice was a rasping parody of his usual smooth drawl.

' I did think of that, dearest Ruthy, but I prefer to think you better than a common thug. Such a charming, beautiful and talented lady as yourself is surely far too civilised for that sort of brutality.'

Ruthy smiled impishly, 'Perhaps, perhaps not.'

Suddenly, moving like a darting snake, Ruthy leaned in and kissed Balthier full on the lips.

Fran saw him stiffen in surprise before giving as good as he got.

When the older woman pulled away her lips were coated in Balthier's blood. She licked the blood off, a feral light in her dark eyes.

' I am feeling whimsical today, my blood is running hot.'

Ruthy's eyes fixed on Fran, dark and vicious, alight with her own depravity.

' I wish for some entertainment.'

Ruthy declared brightly, ' Your lovely Viera says very little, let's see if we can't make her scream.'

Ruthy snapped her fingers and her men converged on Fran, some already beginning to cast spells others wiping off their knuckles to make them fresh for her.

' No!' Balthier lunged forwards, limbs uncoordinated and still too weak.

It was Ruthy who hauled him back and wrapped strong arms around him from behind.

She held him pinned to her breast, his body flush against her lap, a cruel parody of the way a mother would hold a child.

' Give me the blue prints for the machine and her torment ends.' Ruthy hissed coldly in his ear.

Then Fran's view of Balthier was blocked as Ruthy's men converged on her, faces caught in rictus grins of pure malice.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve: Caught in the Mist, Viera and Hume bleed red

The curtains of red and hazy fever dream memory draws back for a moment and Fran can hear the outside world once more.

'…………Fran! Fran, please, speak. Open your eyes…….Fran?'

She can feel cool water and soft washcloth against her skin, the erratic thumping of her own heart, the incessant pleas from the other voice for her to open her eyes; to answer him.

'…………Fran please, the potions are spent and my spell casting is like to kill you sooner than cure you. Fran?'

Had it been her choice she would have answered, she would have struggled back into her own screaming body and reassured him that she was still alive.

The fever dream had other ideas, however, dragging her inexorably back into memory's cruel embrace.

' No! Let her go, she has no part in this!'

The sound of Balthier's desperate pleas, his arguments for reason, restraint and mercy, are lost in the hail of spells hurled at her simultaneously.

Fire's burn met Blizzards bite and flame and ice are in turn shattered by Thunders roar and lightening's strike, Fran screamed as her body was battered by the elemental storm.

Yet when the first of Ruthy's men approached her, thick lips skinned back in hungry wolfish smile, he was met by the sharp strike of Fran's foot, her heel literally wiping the smile from his face.

With a series of brutal twists and pivots of long, clawed hands and deft wrists, she wrenched her hands free of the shackles binding her to the support post and met her attackers free and proud.

' Down Fran!'

The shout, as clear and immediate as an eagles cry, demanded instant obedience and Fran dropped and rolled as the bolt of Thundaga shattered the support post she had been bound to a moment before.

Ruthy, magick crackling around her frame, spun on Balthier who struggled to get his legs under him in time to dodge the ball of Fira she hurled at him.

Fran threw herself bodily at the woman.

The twisty, snake bite sharpness of Mist rose all around Fran as she ploughed into the pirate mistress and knocked them both flying into the wall of the hold.

The shock of Blizzara was nothing to the hissing, heated, sizzling burn of Mist filling Fran's brain, corroding sinuses and slicing nerves.

She lashed out with clawed fists and tasted blood in the air.

She and Ruthy rolled across the floor of the hold, the latter transformed by the heady, quicksilver brilliance of imminent Mist Charge.

The wild thing in Fran, the part that welcomed the sanity eroding thrill of Mist, the almost rapturous joy of mayhem and motion, still possessed enough of Fran's keenness to recognise that she must kill this Hume mage before she could release her Quickening and kill both herself and Balthier.

Fran used her greater height and sinuous build to her advantage and threw the other woman to the ground, straddling the Piratess claws poised at her throat.

The Quickening was approaching; she could feel the eldritch rush of Mist rising to swallow all the oxygen in the hold, transforming the enclosed space into a light spinning vortex of destructive potential.

Fran cared not.

The Mist could hurt her no more than it was already. Her nerves aflame and her senses screaming with the deranged beat of magic and Mist, she brought her claws down, much as the point of multiple daggers, to pierce the throat of the Hume called Ruthy.

Blood spurted, light diminished, Fran's labouring heart stilled and she fell into the darkness left as the Mist rescinded.

She felt it not as she crashed, with a thud, to the floor of the galleon's hold.

Memory satisfied for the time being Fran felt herself begin to return to her own body.

She fought with unconsciousness and managed, finally, to open her eyes to the world once more.

' Fran!'

The world she saw looked much like the main cabin of the Strahl.

The Strahl's captain peering down at her, one eye puffy and squeezed closed, habitual smirk crooked as his bottom lip was swollen and cracked.

'Balthier?'

Fran attempted to sit up in the co-pilot's chair she was slumped in and Balthier reached out from the pilot's chair to steady her.

' Easy now, you've managed to give yourself quite a few scrapes and bruises, wouldn't do to move too fast and do more damage to your lovely self.'

Pushing off his restraining hand she sat up anyway, unable to contain the hiss of pain as her ribs objected to the sudden movement.

She did however ignore the muttered 'I told you so.' from Balthier.

' What of Ruthy?'

She looked about her to see a nervous and subdued Nono give her a brief wave from the back of the cabin.

'Dead. Quite dead, you near decapitated her Fran.'

Balthier's cheerful words at odds with the steady look he gives her.

' I take it Viera have some -_aversion_ - to Mist?'

'How did we escape?' Fran ignored the question. The answer is obvious after all.

' I'm not sure our situation could be classed as an escape.' Balthier answered ironical amusement dry as dust on his lips.

When Fran gave him a look, he inclines his head towards the main window, 'See for yourself.'

Fran looked out at the vista outside the Strahl. Instead of blue sky and cloud she saw – water?

The Strahl was bobbing up and down on the ocean's surface, yet she could hear the engines, they were moving, just not through the air.

' A little known fact of this type of pleasure craft's design.' Balthier drawled at his most ironically disinterested.

' The S-class light airship is amphibious, if that is the word for a ship that can sail the seas and the skies.'

Balthier frowned thoughtfully, ' I may have to look that up.'

'Why are we not in the air?'

Fran decided to distract Balthier from semantic's. It mattered not what the correct descriptive adjective was.

' Because, dear Fran, I can't seem to make the old girl fly. The right Glossair ring was damaged in the cannonade blast.'

'So we are to float on the waves until we sink?'

' Essentially, yes.'

Fran mulled this over for a moment, pointlessly checking the instruments that informed her, yes, the Glossair rings were non-functioning.

'What of Ruthy's men? How did we escape the ship?'

She glanced at Balthier whom she noticed had put on a fresh shirt but left off a new vest perhaps in deference to the wounds and burns still untreated on his flesh.

He managed a faint sardonic smile for her benefit.

' While you were otherwise occupied with eviscerating the dear captain, I took it upon myself to purloin a rifle and deal with the crew. Most of which had little wish to fight after they saw what you did to Ruthy, I might add.'

'I do not remember.' Fran admitted.

' An unfortunate side affect of unconsciousness, Fran, one misses all the fun.'

'This will affect your bid for freedom. With Ruthy dead there will be no war with Einar.'

'Yes, an unfortunate twist of fate, I'll grant you, but under the circumstances; not one I find myself regretting.'

Balthier's words were bland as late afternoon sunshine but his features, bruised and worn, were set in hard lines. Fran raised an eyebrow questioningly.

Balthier shrugged almost apologetically, ' I have a terrible aversion to being over long in the company of lunatics, and Ruthy was certainly quite mad. I don't regret her death.'

Fran was reminded of a previous conversation regarding madness, she kept her voice at its most studiously neutral as she posed her next question.

'You have been in the company of many lunatics, Balthier?'

Nevertheless he still flinched at the question, a muscle in his jaw pulsing, but this time, whether due to exhaustion or something else, he chose to answer her with honesty.

' You could say that, Fran.'

He turned and looked her dead in the eye for the first time since their conversation had begun.

' I was raised by one, you see, the greatest madman in all of Archadia. Dr Cidolfus Demen Bunansa.'

Fran looked at him blankly, ' I do not know of this man.'

She watched in surprise and some discomfort as a sweetly beatific smile touched Balthier's sharp features.

A smile of such genuine warmth and affection that Fran had seen but rarely, and rarer still to have directed at her.

Perhaps it was for this reason, some form of shock at this display of emotion on the part of a consummate actor such as Balthier, towards one such as she, that caused her to resist the automatic motion to remove his hand when he reached out and squeezed her own gently.

' I know, dearest Fran, and you can have no idea how much I adore you for your perfect ignorance.'


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen: What to do with the drunken sky pirate?

Fran was awoken by the low sound of singing. Balthier's strong voice set to the tune of a nursery rhyme.

Getting up from the bunk in the captain's sleeping cabin, the small room filled with Balthier's personal affects, she made her way towards the front of the airship.

She located Balthier slumped down in the pilot's chair lazily steering the crippled Strahl towards the still distant shore.

'Row, row, row your airship gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily…'

Fran reached forward and snatched the bottle of Bhujerban Madhu from Balthier's loose grip. She frowned at the inebriated pirate.

' You are drunk.' She informed him, in case he was unaware of the fact.

Balthier smiled sloppily at her, 'Verily.'

Fran considered her next words carefully before deciding on the best question, ' Why?'

'We are out of curatives.'

Balthier shifted uncomfortably in his seat, through the thin material of his white shirt she could see the patchwork of cuts and bruises decorating his skin.

Fran blinked, ' I could simply heal you. Alcohol will do nothing to heal your injuries.'

Balthier shrugged, 'You were sleeping.'

He gestured languidly towards the bottle, ' It dulls the pain.'

'Why not heal yourself?'

Balthier gave her an impatient look, ' If I could do that, Fran, do you think I'd be sat here like this?'

' You do not know magick?'

Balthier simply shrugged, his manners and posture collapsing, 'Some. A little, what of it?'

Fran watched him curiously, 'You are a very strange Hume.'

'I'll take that as a compliment.'

He smiled rakishly, under the sickly sweet scent of his body metabolising the alcohol she could smell old blood and raw wounds on him.

'I will teach you magick.'

She said firmly. Affording him a quizzical look she made a shooing motion with her hands,

' Go and take your rest. I will pilot the Strahl up to the Phon Coast.'

' I can manage.' He muttered indistinctly, shaking his head.

' You can barely steer.'

Fran pointed out, almost, nearly, beginning to lose her patience. Humes could be most odd when hurt.

Balthier opened his mouth in protest and then closed it with an audible snap.

' I don't know if I can.' He muttered.

'Can what?'

Fran was confused. Balthier looked furtive and uncomfortable and terribly young.

He sighed, though the sound wheezed painfully, scraping over damaged ribs, ' Stand. I'm not sure I can stand.'

' I will help you.'

Fran rose from the co-pilots chair and reached for him.

Balthier looked startled as if he had not imagined she would offer him aid.

It should have been awkward.

Fran avoided physical contact with Humes on most occasions, Viera were not over fond of physical contact. It should have been awkward, yet it was not.

Compared to most Humes Balthier was not too much shorter than she was, perhaps half a head in height not counting her ears and he was of lean build, Fran remembered how thin he was under his thick wrappings of clothing.

Nono appeared from somewhere else in the ship to open the door to the captain's cabin and Fran helped settle Balthier into his bed.

'You should not have used all the cure potions.' She admonished him.

'You needed them far more than I.' He retorted, 'T'was the gentlemanly thing to do.'

Fran said nothing to this. She had little she could say.

He was probably correct, she had been unconscious and he had been well enough to facilitate their escape from Ruthy's ship, the details of said escape she still did not know.

Fran turned to leave him to his sleep, a better curative to what ailed him than Madhu when his words stopped her.

' Things are not going to plan, Fran. I thought I could handle Ruthy and I was wrong. Now in all likelihood Einar will take over Ruthy's fleet and become a greater threat to Nylous than Remus ever was. Nylous will think I failed.'

Fran turned back in the doorway and met the genuinely anxious eyes of the would-be sky pirate. She cocked her head to the side.

' I do not know what to do. I wanted nought but freedom, I was so tired of being another man's pawn. Now I find myself with blood on my hands and still the tool of others.'

'Then you had best get your rest while you can, pirate, so that you may plan your next move with a clear head once we reach the Phon Coast.'

Not waiting for his response Fran turned on her heel and went back to the main cabin.

Settling into the pilot's chair and pushing the Strahl onwards to the coast, a strip of pale golden sand framing the deep blue of the sea. The same hue as the sky above.

Though it was not Fran's nature to worry, calculate, or concern herself with the vagaries of what may be and should be, as she was but a fallen leaf drifting on a breeze since leaving Eruyt, she found herself doing precisely that.

Not scheming for her own safety or well-being, now intrinsically tied to Balthier's through her actions against Ruthy, but for the Strahl and her eccentric captain.

Fran found herself moving inexorably closer to the Hume world. To the point where she found herself thinking as a Hume would.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen: The Second Rule of Pirates; they run and they don't look back

_A/N: I would just like to thank everyone who has read and reviewed this story. All your interest and kind words are hugely appreciated and I love to hear your thoughts on how this story is going!_

Fran watched the surf lap at the beach, rolling inwards almost to where she stood on a sandy bluff before the tide dragged the ocean back again.

Balthier, cured of the worst of his injuries and sober, though he had repeatedly complained in the last few moments of a pounding head, was sat at her feet, examining a seashell with his blunt Hume fingers.

'We should not stay here it is unsafe.'

' Hmm?'

Balthier was barely listening, his attention diverted by the children of some of the hunters from the Camp who were playing tag on the sands.

Fran settled herself down next to him, ' We should make ourselves scarce, it will bode ill for the Hunters Camp if the pirates find us here.'

Balthier blinked at her, once, twice, three times. She watched him focus his thoughts.

' Very well.'

He said with little conviction, turning back to the small hill of wet sand he was mounding like a child building sandcastles.

'You are troubled?'

He looked up and summoned a dull smile, ' Merely hung-over, Fran.'

' Is there a place nearby where we may make repairs to the Strahl?'

Fran watched him curiously, Balthier had created a mote for his lumpy sand mound and pushed small mollusc shells into the mound at strategic places to represent windows.

' We would be better served abandoning the Strahl somewhere in the Tchita Uplands, she is too conspicuous a target.'

The bland indifference in his tone was less affected than usual, it spoke of an apathy that had not seemed a part of his character until now; though Fran acknowledged that she knew him barely at all.

' I had thought the Strahl was part and parcel of your bid for freedom?'

Balthier shrugged, ' I am a practical sort of chap, Fran, possessions can be replaced, lives can't.'

Despite his brisk tone Fran noticed the pained look he granted the Strahl where she sprawled, much as a beached whale, further down the coastline.

Despite herself Fran felt her own hand reach out and brush his shoulder as he sat beside her,

' I was once told by a Hume I deemed wise that men should strive for something greater than mere survival, as to lose that which gives a man his faith is to lose something irredeemable.'

She met Balthier's eyes as she looked down on him, feeling the warmth of his skin under the fine material of his shirt through her hand.

For just a moment she saw something spark deep in his eyes, in the place where the real Balthier resided insulated by, and from, his affectations. Then he laughed.

' Wise words indeed, Fran, alas I fear it's too late for me. I am, for sure, quite a faithless and irredeemable cad.'

His usual bright and brittle good cheer restored, Balthier jumped to his feet and started off towards the stricken Strahl.

Fran followed behind, wondering what had possessed her to speak the words of a man she had once held dear and precious to Balthier, another Hume male.

' There are a number of watery caverns along the Phon Coast, if we secret the Strahl in one, there is good chance she will be safe.'

Balthier called to her as he entered the craft.

Fran clambered aboard after him. Finding him pulling travelling packs from the storage compartments and moving with a controlled, purposeful efficiency.

' You have a plan, Balthier?'

He turned and flashed her a bright smirk,

' I have a myriad of schemes, plans and plots inside my grey matter at any given moment, Fran.'

She quirked an eyebrow at the evasion but did not press, he was clearly working to some plan at the moment, better this than building castles out of sand as their enemies drew close.

Nono, they left in the Hunters encampment, the Moogle had found a small contingent of Moogle travelling merchants on their way to Archades and was busily attempting to persuade them to give up commerce all together.

They powered the Strahl a little way out from the shore line and scouted for one of the caverns Balthier had mentioned.

It took time to find one that was sufficiently secluded, large and wide enough to house the Strahl and far enough inland that the ship wouldn't become completely submerged by water.

'Tis an odd ship for a pirate to use. I wonder what purpose it served for Remus.'

Fran had been wondering about the Strahl since she first laid eyes on the craft.

Beautiful though she was, the Strahl lacked much armament, her cannons rusted from disuse; she had not the durability of other airships and was rather too small to hold much crew or loot.

' It was his love gift to Ruthy, retrieved when she betrayed him and used only for such times when a larger, more battle ready vessel would be a liability and not an advantage.'

Balthier slid his hand, lovingly, over the paint work in farewell and benediction, before they made ready to obscure the cave entrance and depart.

Fran studied Balthier,' Odd that you should be so attached to the vessel.'

Balthier chuckled, ' Ah, but Fran, is she not the finest craft you ever saw?'

' She is fine workmanship.'

Fran had grown used to his evasions when it came to anything even close to a personal question.

She had started to speculate that his unwillingness to answer was less to do with inherent secretiveness and more like that he simply made too many, quick, snap decisions without much forethought or reflection.

'Plus, I have always thought that a sky pirate who depends on force of arms alone is not worthy of the name. Give me a ship with speed, style and class any day.'

' Yet you choose to hide such a ship away in a cave?'

Fran pointed out dryly.

She was learning much about this Hume she was now attached to, yet still found it necessary to pepper him with questions.

There was method to his madness she was certain, she simply failed to fathom it.

Balthier studied her, ' Tis but a temporary measure. A matter of prudence, we are being hounded by the pirates of sea and sky, therefore prudence and common sense dictate we travel by land and on foot to avoid our pursuers.'

Fran shifted her weight from left to right foot, impatiently.

' What is our destination?'

Balthier shrugged, grinning, ' Anywhere but here.'

'Archades? It is the nearest populated area and pirates are not looked upon well there, we would be safe enough.'

Balthier's unguarded expression was a complicated twist of pain, fear and something almost wistful before he visibly regained control of his feelings.

'Very well, what I should have said was anywhere but here and Archades. I plan never to return there, save in a silk lined cedar casket.'

' Then you would have us run blind without a destination or a ship and hope to avoid capture?'

Again she was answered by that all encompassing smirk that, had she not been Fran with the patience and collectedness of the Viera, she would find more than a trifle irritating.

' I am, after all, a sky pirate, Fran. It's what we do; we run and we fly.'


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen: Running and Flying and everything betwixt and between

From the Tchita Uplands to the Mosphoran Highwaste, a stop over in Nalbina Town to 'appropriate' an airship and supplies to a long haul flight out to the furthest reaches of the Giza Plains found Fran and Balthier on the edges of the Ozmone Plains on the wrong side of the Rains.

' I do not like the wet.'

' As you have said Fran.'

Watching him with narrowed eyes Fran shook her wet hair from her face and behind her back.

At least in the entrance to the Ozmone Plains they had left the Rains behind.

She had been in Balthier's company some three months now. She had come to the conclusion in that time that she understood him not at all.

'We go in circles.' She pointed out.

' Indeed we do.'

Balthier was examining one of the potatoes he had purchased in Nalbina but days earlier for no obviously discernable reason; neither one of them enjoyed the taste of the tubers.

'Perchance Fran, do you have your dagger to hand?'

She did not waste breath asking what he wanted with it; instead she unsheathed the weapon and handed it to him wordlessly.

'Thank you.'

As she watched he sliced the potato in half, laid one half carefully down on the flat rock beside him and from the stuffed pouches that hung from his double belt pulled a scrap of paper.

Fran recognised it as one of the new fangled licence certificate's for second grade guns.

Pulling a small magnifying lens from one of the pouches as well as a strange, oily salve in a small round container, Balthier laid the Licence paper down on a rock beside him and started carving into the potato half he held in his hands.

Half an hour later, Balthier was still delicately carving something into the flesh of the potato.

Without a word Fran drifted off to scout any possible dangers ahead, even though she did not know which way Balthier intended them to travel.

Perhaps she could persuade him to stop awhile in the Garif village of Jahara?

Returning some time later she found Balthier where she had left him, examining the half of potato with some satisfaction and pulling more implements from the copious reaches of his pouches.

' You are pleased with your potato, Balthier?'

Very few Humes would be able to taste the note of sarcasm that flavoured Fran's careful tones, Balthier, almost entirely responsible for its presence, was the rare exception. He grinned.

'Very.'

Without another word he opened a small, flat case containing the very expensive Malboro ink that notaries used for official business.

Fran watched as he pushed the carved face of the potato into the ink and pressed the covered face onto the back of the gun licence.

'Hmmm, not perfect, but it will do for these parts.'

Balthier held up the paper for her inspection and Fran saw the purpose of his labours.

The potato had left an inked impression on the back of the Licence resembling the stamped seal used by the Nalbina Licensers.

Made with the very ink used by the notaries it was completely indistinguishable, to Fran's eyes, from the real stamp.

'These Licenses are expensive, not to mention an inconvenience and liability for those in our position. They leave too much a paper trail just to buy a simple Bangle. Producing our own Licences should make things much easier from here on in.'

Fran raised her eyebrows, 'You will need to acquire stamps from the other city states, also. Those from Nalbina will be of no use in Rozzaria.'

' I know. They use water seals and magicked papers in Rozzaria and Balfonheim. We will have to steal some of those for reference.'

Fran sat down beside him and took the potato stamp from him thoughtfully.

Balthier began the meticulous process of putting his forgery kit away.

'You will wish to find another place to bury treasure, yes?'

He had been doing so for the last two months, as they had run, and flown and hidden, from the pirates that pursued them every step of the way.

Balthier led the remnants of Remus, Ruthy's and Nylous's crews around by the nose in a merry dance with no end in sight.

One or other of the factions would find the cache Balthier buried and then the other two would fight the first for it, giving Fran and Balthier opportunity to run on again.

'I was thinking the Switchback.' Balthier said offhandedly.

'The place is infested with nasty Mesmenirs and the like, good a place as any for buried treasure.'

'And then? Surely they will grow tired of this game, Balthier, no treasure can be worth this much.'

Balthier, getting to his feet and offering Fran a hand up, which she ignored, shook his head.

' This treasure is.'

'And what is this treasure?'

Fran had seen the scraps of paper, the technical drawings Balthier pain-stakingly sketched out before putting them in chests.

He filled the chests also with random bits and pieces used in the construction of airships, yet despite her own understanding of mechanics, she knew not what the pieces and the drawings related to.

Balthier's expression was glassy, as it often was when she asked him such questions, the reason she so seldom pressed him.

She thought that he would simply refuse to answer, as had happened before, or that rare spark of anger would return, just as she had seen the first time she had questioned his sanity in Balfonheim near the beginning of their journey.

His answer, when it came, was so soft even she scarce heard it.

' Nothing at all. Smoke and mirrors; an insurance policy for a would-be pirate.'


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen: Dissolution of a budding partnership; the diversion ends?

' Fran!'

Balthier raised his Sirius rifle and fired a shot directly into the gut of the Rozzarian privateer who had struck Fran and caused her to fall.

The man fell backwards, in need of immediate aid from one of his compeers bearing tufts of Phoenix Down.

Balthier finished the rushed incantation that revived Fran and she groggily got to her feet.

' Your magicks improve, pirate.'

' Just as well. I think, perhaps Fran, we need to employ the better part of valour at this juncture.'

Firing as quickly as he could into the group of privateers bearing the colours of the pirate king Nylous, Balthier led their retreat.

' They follow still.'

Climbing up the bluffs of The Shred in Ozmone Plains and weaving out of the talons and wings of angry Wu, Fran stopped to catch her breath.

' Determined reprobates, aren't they?'

Balthier racked another round into the rifle's chamber and sighted one of the Wu, fifty paces off.

'Balthier?'

Fran almost knocked the rifle askew when she realised he meant to fire on the fiend, which was not currently attacking them.

Then Fran saw the privateers making their way past the Wu towards them and understood his purpose.

Hitting the Wu and setting the flock of five into frenzy right at the moment the privateers crept past, Balthier grunted in satisfaction as the rebound shock ran back up his forearm.

The two ran as fast as they could towards the nearest passage away from the Wu's increasingly ferocious assault on the privateers.

'The Garif will not shelter us if we bring danger to their lands.'

Fran grabbed hold of Balthier's sleeve and hauled him down into a small cleft in the ground, moss and brambles created a curtain over the entrance to the tiny cave.

' Ow. Fran!'

Fran pressed Balthier back as far into the hiding place as she could without grinding him to bits against solid rock and squeezed herself in after him.

Against her back she could feel the thundering of his heartbeat.

Her ears where bent uncomfortably against gritty soil and stone. The sound of their breathing over loud.

Footsteps indicated that not all the privateers had been felled by the Wu.

Moments later Fran was treated to the sight of a pair of shiny black boots.

A heated conversation in Rozzarian was understood by Fran but not Balthier.

A voice, very clear and seemingly coming from the owner of the boots Fran could see spoke with the smooth, flowing cadence of high Rozzarian.

' Nylous wants Bunansa alive. The design is incomplete and only Bunansa can decipher the code. As for the Viera, do as you will.'

Another pair of boots, these of a dull, cracked brown leather thudded up beside the first.

Another Rozzarian voice, this one harsh with the dialect of the vineyard mountains in northern Rozzaria, spoke up.

' The Archadian scum is crafty, his Viera vicious. Where are they? There is nowhere for them to hide and they could not have made it to the Garif without our notice.'

' Take the men and split up, scour the compass points. Bunansa must be close.'

The first voice commanded, straining her hearing, inhibited as it was, Fran heard what sounded like seven or eight different pairs of booted feet run off in different directions.

Leaving only the man in the shiny black boots.

Fran made her choice, rolling out of her hiding spot in a practiced smooth motion Fran was on her feet with a dagger pressed to the Rozzarian's throat before he had chance to turn around.

Balthier hauled himself from the hiding space with considerably less ease and spent an unhurried moment dusting himself off as Fran commanded their captive to remain still and silent in perfect Rozzarian.

' Bunansa.'

The Rozzarian nearly spat the name, dark eyes flashing in a handsome swarthy face, his thick black hair pulled back in a pony-tail.

Balthier stepped out in front of the man, who made an ill-fated lunge for him.

Fran hauled him back and pressed the dagger edge with sharper warning against his throat.

'Now, now, Alzier, that's no way to treat an old friend is it?' Balthier all but purred.

The Rozzarian, Alzier, spat at Balthier who flinched, before calmly wiping his cheek with a handkerchief.

'You Rozzarian's really are an uncouth lot, aren't you?'

Fran looked at Balthier over the head of the Rozzarian. They had not much time before the rest of his troupe came back. Balthier nodded eyes clear, cool and calculating.

When he spoke, it was in brisk, efficient tones, devoid of his usual teasing.

' You had best quit that useless struggling, Alzier, as you can see Fran is much stronger than she looks.'

Balthier began to remove his double belt and his rifle from his back and laid both down on the grass at his feet before stepping forward to come level with Alzier's face.

' What are your orders? Capture or kill?'

Alzier hesitated and Fran ever so gently pressed the dagger into supple skin.

' Capture. Nylous wants to see you.' Alzier sneered.

Balthier nodded as if this was only to be expected.

' And the Strahl; my associate Fran? What are your orders pertaining to them?'

Alzier did not hesitate this time; a trickle of blood was already weeding its way down his throat from the last hesitation.

' You are the priority. Nylous cares not for a stolen ship, or a feral Viera.' Dark head tried to turn towards Fran as the man hissed his insult.

Balthier caught the man's head and turned his face back to the front, roughly, by his thick, dark hair.

' That is hardly gentlemanly behaviour. Did no one ever tell you how to speak to a lady?'

Before Alzier could come out with more than a guttural Rozzarian curse Balthier was speaking again.

'Let him go Fran.'

Both Fran and her captive jolted with surprise.

Fran did not speak as clearly it was better that the Rozzarian believed her nothing more than an animal, incapable of speech and understanding, yet she put her question in the look she shot Balthier.

' I have decided under the circumstances to acquiesce to your employers invitation to meet.'

Balthier spoke to Alzier, his high-born Archadian accent thickening, whether by accident or design Fran knew not.

Balthier opened his arms in a gesture designed to show that he was now unarmed.

' I put myself with full confidence and without reservation into your custody, Alzier Al-Vizera, in return I expect you and your men to allow my associate free passage away from Ozmone.'

Alzier curled his lip, ' Do not think this act of contrition will move Nylous to leniency Balthier. You are traitor and will be treated as such.'

Balthier smirked, ' Traitor you say? Hmm, perhaps, though I am not sure you or your ilk are fit to pass judgement. Experts on treachery and oath-breaking though you undoubtedly are.'

Alzier let loose a torrent of the lowest, foulest of Rozzarian curses towards Balthier.

He cast aspersions on Balthier's manlihood, his mother's profession and personal conduct and Balthier's own sexual preferences.

' What a foul, low-brow language you Rozzarians speak.'

Balthier interrupted the tirade with his customary, highly recognisable Archadian drawl.

' I don't need to understand any of that drivel to hope sincerely that you don't kiss your wife with that mouth.'

A truly nasty smile twisted into life on Balthier's face.

' Oh, that's right, Anoushka left you, didn't she? How terribly impolitic of me to forget.'

Alzier stopped his cursing though he strained against Fran's hold.

To Fran his strong body and wire taut muscles and up-curled lip resembled a hunting dog held back from the kill.

' Nylous has given you a task, Alzier, bring my breathing, conscious self to him. Surely you don't intend to disappoint him?'

'You would give yourself up to certain death? You Archadians are all mad.'

Balthier cocked his head to the side, ' While I cannot deny that death is a certainty, I have no plans to die any time soon, I assure you. As to the rest,'

Balthier shrugged with studied nonchalance examining his fingernails,

' There is a fine line between genius and madness, where the line blurs I could not say.'

When both Alzier and Fran simply stared at him Balthier folded his arms across his chest and frowned at them.

' Shall we get on with this? Tis a fair journey back to Veridree from here. I would hate to keep Nylous waiting over long.'

Fran met Balthier's eyes and saw certainty and clarity looking back.

He knew what he was about and confidence oozed from him as he stood; a study in nonchalance, before them.

Fran slowly removed the dagger from Alzier's throat.

As the Rozzarian spun to draw his own rifle on her Fran ducked and swept up the Sirius Balthier had left on the ground, pointing the barrel confidently straight at the Rozzarian.

Balthier sighed and shook his head stepping directly into the line of sight between both rifles.

'Enough of this. Let's be off shall we?'

Alzier swiftly grabbed hold of Balthier around the throat using him as a human shield.

' Call off the Viera.'

Rolling his eyes with total lack of concern for his own safety Balthier sighed.

'Fran, please.'

Slowly, doubting the wisdom of this stratagem, whatever it may be, Fran stepped back and lowered the rifle. Alzier did the same.

' Make her leave.' The Rozzarian demanded.

Despite the loudness of his voice, Fran could hear the quaver of fear in it.

Fran watched Balthier, pulled uncomfortably against the older, wider, man's body.

Despite being unarmed he remained relaxed in voluntarily surrender.

He smiled at her, the same soft smile of genuine warmth she had seen when he had told her he adored her ignorance.

'My dearest Fran, I have enjoyed our time together immensely. You are an excellent bodyguard, exemplary mechanic and fine conversationalist. As a token of my esteem please take the Strahl. I know you'll treat her well.'

' Balthier?'

Fran decided it would not hurt to speak, if only in farewell.

' Remember the second rule of pirating, Fran. You had best be off.'

' Go Viera, before I choose to remove you from this world.'

Alzier demanded, regaining his confidence, with Balthier as his shield.

Fran noticed Balthier's gaze drop with deliberate slowness towards his discarded double belt, he disguised the instruction in a slow nod of farewell and benediction.

' Run and fly, Fran, run and fly.'

Moving swiftly Fran snatched up the belts, heavy with the stuffed pouches Balthier carried his various sundry tools in, and darted away, Sirius rifle strapped to her back.

The bullet from Alzier's gun missed her by a mile, she had heard the click of the trigger before the bullet was loosed and ducked accordingly.

Fran ran like a hare towards the Garif encampment in Jahara.

For this reason she did not see the privateers lead Balthier, chained at neck, wrist and ankles towards a cloaked airship and make for the south-eastern Rozzarian border.

She did not need to; Balthier had already helpfully provided their destination, Veridree, if she should choose to follow.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen: Plans within plans, the plot thickens

Fran and Nono stood side by side by the bar of the Whitecap Tavern in Balfonheim. Or at least Fran stood and Nono hovered somewhere level with her shoulder.

It was precisely five days, seven hours and forty-nine minutes since Balthier had surrendered himself into the custody of the pirate Alzier.

Long, clawed fingers scratched absently at the pitted wood of the bar as she sipped her drink.

Though having a low tolerance for Hume alcohol Fran had decided that this was one circumstance where a drink was required.

If she could only be certain that Balthier had the situation under control.

The ambush had left them badly outnumbered against the competent band of privateers, many former conscripts of the Rozzarian army, but he had not needed to surrender.

It was that tiny quiver of doubt that Fran could not silence.

Balthier had shown no fear, no doubt in himself, as if everything was going according to his own secret plans, yet Fran could not help but feel doubt.

There had been a theatrical lilt to his last words to her, a too carefully studied nonchalance and archness to his movements.

The look in his eyes as he had nodded to his belts, all of it designed to convey to Fran a message, but the meaning eluded her.

Why had he left the Strahl to her?

Fran had been the companion of many Humes over the last forty-seven years.

Sometimes she spent but months with them until her curiosity was satisfied, sometimes years.

Once she was the constant companion of a wayfarer from Nabradia for all of a decade.

Balthier was merely one in a long line of other Humes who had provided interesting 'diversions' for her in her wanderings.

The difference this time was that her partnership with Balthier had been dissolved before Fran's curiosity had been satisfied.

She was left with questions, feeling almost bereft. She had been promised a fine diversion indeed and found herself left behind in the beginning of the final act.

'You the one what's wantin' to speak to Rikken?'

Fran turned towards the rough female voice, tobacco leaf and whiskey scarred and found herself looking down upon the fierce gaze of a woman with ample cleavage and lithely muscled forearms.

' You are not he.'

Fran stated, confirming without confirming the assumption.

Fran was aware in the periphery of her senses that Nono had drifted away, as if he and Fran had only been strangers standing together in a bar.

' I'm Elza. Who the 'ell are you?'

Fran cocked her head to the side, ' I am Fran.'

Elza sneered and cocked her hip against the bar, looking both amused and condescending.

' An' who the 'ell is Fran when's she's at 'ome, eh?'

' The current custodian of the Strahl.'

Elza sucked in a breath at that, dark eyes narrowing, 'Master or owner?'

Fran had the impression that she had fallen into a carefully scripted and formulated code. Her next words would either make or break this suspicious stalemate.

'Neither. The former owner is dead, and the Strahl's master by right of combat is unable to claim her at present.'

Elza nodded her head, 'That's wot we 'eard, that Balthier act'ly gone and did it. Never expected you though.'

Fran simply looked at her. She knew not what the woman referred to, though it surprised her not at all to find evidence of more of Balthier's plans within plans.

He seemed the master of a certain kind of intrigue, a scheming randomness. Master of the game of chance and circumstance.

' I have something to give to Rikken, for his eyes only.'

The carefully folded piece of parchment was just one of many oddities Fran had found in Balthier's seemingly bottomless belt pouches.

Elza nodded, coming to a decision, ' Come on with yer then.'

She gestured towards the doors to the Tavern.

Fran paused a moment before following the woman out of the Whitecap and back up the main boardwalk towards a private residence above the Weapons store.

A man, dressed in traditional sea pirate garb and with the wiry musculature of a lifelong seaman and dock hand, stood in a small, sparsely furnished attic room.

'Bloody 'ell, a real Viera.'

Elza walked past Fran and into the room to cuff the man around the back of the head.

' Mind yer bloody manners. She brings word from our boy.'

Fran studied the man, ' You are Rikken?'

The man, rubbing the back of his head, nodded.

'Aye. An' yer that Viera our boy was wit' in the Whitecap when Einar came a callin'.'

Shrewdness glittered in the man's deep set eyes and Fran was forced to re-assess her initial quick judgement of the Hume as just another slow-witted, rude, heathen.

Without a word Fran handed the folded note to Rikken and waited while the man quickly scanned the writing. She did not have to wait long.

With a whoop of pure delight, Rikken threw down the paper and swept Elza up into his arms, spinning her around in a huge bear hug.

' Bloody 'ell. He's actu'ly gone and done it. Crazy bastard.'

Fran cocked her head to the side quizzically and waited for the two Humes to finish celebrating. Rikken sobered up and looked at Fran keenly.

'What part do you play in this game?'

Fran answered before she knew it, her answer instinctive, pure. ' I am the audience.'

She knew it was the right answer when both Rikken and Elza grinned broadly.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen: Bluff and double bluff; a pirate revolt

' Balfonheim is its own city, we got our own laws an' our own code.'

Rikken pounded his fist down on the table, making the litter of bottles and empty tankards tremble. His face was red from emotion and too much drink.

' We ain't beholden to Archades, an' we sure as 'ell ain't goin' to take a bunch of Rozzo's telling us what to do.'

Fran quirked an eyebrow at the racial slur against Rozzarians.

'Rozzo's?'

'Nylous an' that lot of puffed up Rozzo ingrates. Think they can use us honest pirates to get in the Margrace's good graces. Bloody Rozzo leeches 'ave been usin' Balfonheim an' their pirates to attack Archadia on the sly.'

' I see.'

It explained much. It explained why the Pirate King's men were of Rozzarian birth for one.

Fran had also heard that the depredations of the sea and sky pirates had been particularly severe against those vessels carrying the official crest of Archadia.

Many had assumed it was Landissian freedom fighters or people with sympathies to the threatened kingdoms of Dalmasca and Nabradia.

So it was Rozzaria, working through privateers? Interesting.

' What does this have to do with Balthier?'

It was Elza who picked up the narrative then.

' We met Balthier in Bervenia, we was tryin' to bump off that bastard Remus, to get at Nylous, an' he was tryin' to run away from 'im.'

Elza snorted into her beer with amusement as her eyes went distant with memory.

' Got a silver tongue that one. He managed to talk us out of riggin' the Strahl wit' explosive an' promised us he could take out both Remus an' Nylous, if we left the Strahl alone.'

Rikken nodded his head fiercely.

' 'E might 'ave been born a bloody Archadian toff but Balthier's a pirate in his blood, no mistake. 'E 'ad been plannin' the whole fing for the last two years.'

' Planning what?'

Elza snorted derisively, ' Getting' rid o' Nylous o' cause, though he 'ad that bloody Rozzo convinced he was workin' for 'im the whole time.'

'Balthier indicated that Remus was disloyal to Nylous, that Nylous wanted Balthier to remove him?'

Fran left a delicate questioning edge to her statement.

' Balthier could convince the bloody high and mighty Gran Kiltias 'imsel' there weren't no gods with enough time.' Elza rolled her eyes.

Fran met Rikken's reddened eyes. She was not sure she liked this side of Balthier she was hearing of.

His deviousness had an edge of ruthless coldness she had not seen in him in person.

Rikken shrugged, ' It comes wit the territory, I s'pose. Balthier was a damned Judge! They pump ice an' Viper venom int' the recruits blood a fore they give 'em the armour.'

Elza smiled shrewdly, 'Bet he never told yer that, did he?'

She looked pointedly at Fran, who shrugged unconcerned.

' The past is of little consequence to me.'

It was by its very nature past, gone and finished. It served no purpose to worry over it.

Elza smirked, ' No wonder he took such a shine to yer, then.'

Fran did not know quite what to say to this. So she remained silent.

'Leave the Viera be, Els.' Rikken gave the woman a playful shove.

' Tell me of the cache's.'

Fran looked at Rikken and Elza, they looked back blankly.

' The what?'

Fran frowned, ' Balthier was intent on burying treasure all over Ivalice for the Pirate King to find.'

Rikken shrugged, ' don't know noffing 'bout that. Weren't part of our deal.'

Elza elaborated saving Fran the trouble of asking,

' We gave Balthier six months to create enough of a ruckus so as me and Rik could gather the Balfonheim pirates in revolt 'gainst the bloody Rozzo's, in return 'e got the Strahl and a share of Nylous' estate.'

'And the note?'

Rikken shrugged, 'See for yersel'.'

He proffered the crumpled note, Fran took it by the papers edge, avoiding touching the man.

_Greetings __Rikken, __Elza__. I have lived up to my end of our bargain and within the time frame. Many regards, __Balthier._

' Nylous still lives, yes?'

Fran tapped her fingers on the wooden table top. She did not understand the game Balthier played.

'Aye, but e's pulled most o' his men outta Balfonheim an' gone to Veridree. The Port's ours for the takin'.'

Fran studied both Hume's before her. It was clear that neither felt either the need or the inclination to go to Balthier's aid.

Fran got to her feet, towering unintentionally above the seated Humes, ' I thank you for your time.'

Fran was already through the door when she heard Elza call after her.

' You'll want to head north-westerly past Rabanastre. Speak to Via at the Aerodrome an' the Moogles will see yer Strahl is ship-shape.'

Fran turned back to Elza curious, ' North-westerly?'

Elza was leaning one hip, provocatively, against the doorframe as Fran stood on the rickety steps leading down into the Weaponers store.

' Yer'll be wantin' to bust 'im out, won't yer? Goin to the fortress at Veridree?'

Fran blinked, startled. Did she plan on rescuing Balthier?

She had assumed that her part, albeit a small one in this unfolding drama, was over.

She had been as a tree planted on a busy city street, watching all that passed beneath its boughs but touched by, and part of, nothing.

Was she now expected by these presumptuous Humes to play some role in their convoluted and ultimately pointless battles for freedom?

Elza seemed to read something into her placid regard and sighed in exaggerated fashion causing her ample cleavage to heave dangerously.

' Yer're 'is partner, aren't yer? An' yer got the Strahl.'

Realisation crashed over Fran, though her face remained impassive. She had the Strahl and he had employed her as bodyguard.

Balthier must have planned his own surrender and capture all along, very likely hoping that a sense of curiosity or obligation would motivate Fran to come to his rescue when no one else would.

Fran had absolutely no idea how she felt about this blatant manipulation, and the incredible depth of insight Balthier had into her own character, which it demonstrated.

' North-westerly passed Rabanastre?' Fran repeated the directions for confirmation.

' Look for the ruddy great tower with all the cannons, that's the Veridree fortress.'

Fran nodded briskly to the woman and continued down the steep backstairs to reach the backdoor to the weapons and armoury store.

She stepped out into the balmy night breeze that smelled of salt and brine and the press of too many Humes in too small a place.

Without hesitation, for it was not in her nature to hesitate, Fran made her steady way towards the Aerodrome to speak to the Moogle Via about retrieving the Strahl.

Five days had passed already since Balthier's capture; she could afford no further delays.

Still she had yet to decide what she would do upon finding the Pirate. Rescue him or murder him?

_A/N: Just to say again thanks to everyone who reads and reviews - thirty+ reviews is just fantastic!_


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen: Nono the insulation expert?

North-westerly passed Rabanastre proved to be a misleading heading.

For one it did not take account of the Jagd that encircled the oasis city, crown jewel of Dalmasca.

Another impediment was the imminent nuptials of Dalmasca's crown princess Ashelia to the crown prince of Nabradia, prince Rasler, all but days from now.

In preparation for the happy event Dalmasca and Nabradia had put in place a stringent no fly zone over their territories until the wedding celebrations were over.

Airships could only fly through the joint territories by strict permission. Permission unlikely to be granted to a known pirate airship.

Fran did not know how to overcome these obstacles without risking being shot down from the sky by the Dalmascan Knights of the Sword flying division.

Therefore a lengthy diversion via Bhujerba and skirting the territory formerly known as the kingdom of Landis was necessary to pierce the Rozzarian border.

Ten days, thirteen hours and fifty-seven minutes since Balthier's capture found Fran, accompanied by Nono, in the Falcon Claw tavern in Veridree, border town between what was once Landis and the south eastern edge of Rozzaria.

Nono, the Moogle having developed a devotion to Balthier in a very short time, in part because Balthier never tired of listening to the Moogle espouse his philosophy of Kupo, had insisted on helping in his liberation.

'Kupo-po.'

Nono perched on the table edge, orange pop-pom plume hanging dejectedly.

' Never seen a more heavily fortified fortress. I doubt Archades could do better, kupo.'

' It is impressive. This Nylous must be a man of some importance in Rozzaria to have his own Paling to protect his fortress.'

Fran was yet to work out a strategy for how she and Nono could achieve their goal.

Fran did not even know if Balthier still lived, but instinct told her he did.

She had scouted out the Veridree fortress and found it near impregnable.

Certainly she, conspicuous enough as a lone Viera in a Hume town, would be hard pressed to enter unnoticed.

Nono, however, was another matter. Moogles, though perfectly capable of fighting when they needed to, were often ignored by Humes who believed them harmless.

Nono may be able to find a way in and locate Balthier. Fran would simply have to hope that serendipity would provide the means.

' Moogle workers, Farouk, you get what you pay for.'

Fran zeroed her hearing in on the conversation occurring between two Rozzarians on the table across the tavern from her.

She listened intently as an idea formed.

' We're under capacity as it is. The Moogles are the best for insulation; couldn't get a Seeq to slip in through the cracks could you? But they charge too much!'

' Know they got a lock on the market, don't they. Know the competition isn't there, eh. Still the Fortress needs insulation in the walls, so there's nothing for it but to pay up.'

Fran focused her attention on Nono considering. ' Do you know how to install insulation?'

Nono, unable to hear the conversation looked confused.

' Installation, kupo?'

Fran rose to her feet. 'Come.'

Strolling out onto the crowded street of the town, she looked down the hill to the heavily loaded cart she had noticed on arrival but thought little of.

A crowd of Moogles loitered around the cart, which was filled with building and insulation materials.

Fran walked forward and addressed the lead Moogle, a dark furred creature with a red pom-pom plume on its head and sharp eyes.

' My compatriot needs work.'

She said without preamble motioning to Nono who hovered confusedly behind her, wringing his long sleeves.

' I had heard you needed labourers.' She added when the Moogle simply stared at her.

The dark Moogle floated over to Nono. ' Experience?'

'Kupo?' Nono backed off.

' He has experience of airship repair.'

Fran filled in, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

It was the truth; Nono had helped, under Fran's guidance, to repair the Strahl.

Nono, feeling a little more confidence in this, waved his wrench, which he now carried everywhere with him for no discernable reason, enthusiastically.

' Kupo-po!'

' Not that useful in the building trade.' The dark Moogle said sceptically.

' Nono wishes to learn new skills. He will work for free.' Fran wanted to speed this process up.

'Free! Kuop-po! Why didn't you say so?'

The dark Moogle rose up a foot in the air and then descended in obvious glee.

'Welcome aboard Kupo!'

The dark Moogle and his colleagues swiftly surrounded Nono pulling him along to the cart. Fran deftly snagged the back of Nono's green tunic.

' Stay only until you locate Balthier.'

Nono nodded gravely, ' You can count on me, kupo!'

Nono flitted off after the Moogle builders and Fran strolled back to the lodgings to wait and plan.

She would need to acquire rope, a grapple, a hoist and pulley mechanism and some explosives.

It occurred to Fran that the life of a sky pirate was really not that difficult, though one must be well versed in how to break in to and out of dungeons and prisons.

Especially if one found oneself in the company of Balthier, for any length of time.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty: Sky Pirate Fran to the rescue?

' Kupo, kupo. Found him, I found him!'

Nono, covered in brick dust, bits of insulation fluff and other detritus of hard work, sailed into the small room Fran had obtained above the tavern for their stay.

'He yet lives?'

'Yes, kupo.'

Fran nodded. It was as well. She had managed to acquire rope, grappling hooks and explosive, as well as a map of the fortress interior.

She would have been slightly irked to have all her preparations be for naught.

Fran unrolled the map on the small table and Nono crowded close.

'Where is he being held?'

Nono studied the map, squinting as he did so.

' I saw him, kupo. He saw me too but he didn't say hello. I think he was a bit busy, kupo.'

'Busy?'

' The pirate king, Nylous, he had Balthier building something for him. I don't like that man, kupo.'

Nono pointed a tiny clawed finger to a spot on the map indicating the central tower of the fortress.

Fran frowned. This would make her job harder.

'Building what?'

' I don't know kupo. It looked strange. Some sort of weapon. They were using Mist engines, kupo.'

Mist engines?

Fran looked speculatively over at the explosives scattered over the bed in the sparsely furnished inn room. Mist was a highly combustible agent.

' How does Balthier fare? Is he injured?'

'Yes, kupo, but he walks and talks. He is chained to the machine he builds and guarded at all times by men with whips.'

Fran wondered if Balthier had known back on the Ozmone Plains as to what fate he had surrendered too?

It was hard to fathom that such as he would submit so passively to such cruel captivity.

Yet Fran was of the opinion that the workings of his Hume mind were not completely sane.

Fran tapped the map, her clawed finger rapping against the location Nono had indicated.

' You are certain he remains in this location at all times? What of sleep?'

' On the floor by the machine there was bedding, kupo.'

' I have a plan.'

Said Fran.

Fran who had spent the last ten years, since her Nabradian wayfarer had died, drifting with the absence of purpose of a cloud in the sky.

So caught in the moment, was Fran, that she did not notice the difference within her.

So busy living that she did not recognise her own resurrection.

It was night when she and Nono snuck into the quadrangle compound of the fortress and hid in the shadows looking up at the central tower.

' We must reach the roof.'

The sky cycle had been spied outside the tavern and stolen on a last minute whim.

Fran, who did not generally have whims, was surprised at her own actions. Now, however, she was grateful for it.

The cycle's engines whirred into life softly; Fran sat at the front, hands clenching the handlebars and throttle.

Nono, perched precariously on the back, dwarfed by the plush upholstered leather seat, clutched the bag of supplies.

Caution would afford no advantage, better to gun the engine and be too fast for the slow witted Hume guards to notice their presence.

Powering the cycle at a near vertical angle, Fran roared upwards towards the tower roof.

Nono, struggling to remain seated and hold onto their explosives and ropes, let out a startled yelp that was immediately swallowed by the wind.

Fran pushed the cycle to its limit. Going as high as it could go before the Mist engine stalled. Below she could see the glittering steeple of the towers glass roof.

It was an oddity of its design that the central tower had a glass roof, rimmed by stone battlements. Fran could look straight down into the circular chamber.

She manoeuvred the cycle down onto the battlements, unguarded because Humes believed the walls of the fortress were impregnable and the Paling prevented airships from flying overhead.

She and Nono peered through the glass roof down into the warm, diffuse, yellow light that came from the interior.

Fran's keen eyes immediately picked up the movement of Humes fifty feet below.

Fran pulled out suction cup and glass cutter, found in amongst Balthier's scattered belongings on the Strahl, and began to make a hole, initially sufficient to hear what went on within.

' You are looking sluggish, Balthier, need I remind you what happens to workers who are lax in their toil?'

' No. Though if you would like me to move at faster rate, you might want to remove the leg irons? Some food would be welcome also.'

' I think not.'

Fran could only just make out their voices. The stranger who sat on a gilded throne was almost hidden from view by the extravagance of his seat.

Balthier, who moved with dragging step around a large machine, spoke in subdues tones and had been stripped down to nothing but his leather trousers.

Fran could see the criss-crossing scars layering his back even from her high vantage point. An unfamiliar surge of anger spiked inside her.

' How long until the device is ready?'

The other man sat forward in his throne and Fran, although viewing all from above, saw that the man was obscenely fat; his dark head looking like a spot of oil on the top of a purple clad Slime.

' Hard to say, it is a delicate undertaking.'

The man in the throne snapped his fingers and a Hume wearing black and gold livery snapped a whip.

Balthier staggered against the machines bulk, though he made nary a sound as the whip left a bloody trail down his back.

' Three days, less maybe, if you would stop whipping me!'

The whip went up and came back down again two times in quick succession.

Balthier dropped to his knees. Fran only heard his defiant retort because she was already straining her hearing to the limits.

' Is …..that… your…..best?'

The first of the Mist bombs went sailing down into the open chamber as Fran kicked out the pane of glass, creating a shower of rapier like fragments to cover her descent.

She leapt, rope and pulley mechanism securely fastened to the battlements and herself, down into the chamber.

Landing neatly on the chamber floor surrounded by glass, Fran quickly threw down more Mist grenades, the same as those Balthier had used on the slavers purveema where they had first met.

The Humes reacted to the sudden emergence of Mist phantoms, casting misleading reflections and distorting perception, in predictable fashion; they panicked.

Fran moved swiftly towards Balthier, who was still on his knees, watching her with the most surprised expression she had ever seen upon his face.

'Fran?'

Raising the battleaxe high above her head Fran bought it down with a resounding clang onto the metal links of the chain connecting Balthier to the contraption he was building.

The huge, fat man, dressed all in purple, barged through the veil of Mist towards them.

He wielded a gun, which appeared to be the weapon of choice among pirates, and fired.

Fran ducked, knocking a slightly dazed Balthier to the ground also.

A crackle and hiss warned Fran that Nono had released the pin on the first of the explosive grenades.

Fran launched herself towards the bulbous Hume, who she guessed must be the infamous Nylous, and released a Quickening towards him, Shatterheart.

The pirate king was more formidable than his appearance warranted however, and he grabbed a hold of her ankle in one huge, meaty, fist and threw her across the mosaic tile floor of the chamber.

'Tsk-tsk Balthier, so you would abuse my hospitality by bringing a Viera to my home?'

The man levelled his gun directly at Fran's head.

She rolled and sprang to her feet, narrowly missing the shot that cracked the white and turquoise floor tiles.

Fran, using the accumulated Mist to her advantage, immediately began calling down another Quickening. Dodging as Nylous threw a powerful punch her way.

She was forced to hold onto the Quickening as Nylous, moving with a speed that his sheer bulk should have rendered impossible, released a series of punches and kicks that backed Fran into a corner of the chamber.

When she raised her battleaxe to cleave his tiny, heavily jowled head from his rotund body, he grabbed her wrist and twisted it mercilessly until Fran lost all feeling and dropped the battleaxe.

Fran could barely block the next series of punches that pounded into her leather shield and forearms. Staggering back she hit stone wall.

Nylous bore down on her, finger twitching on the trigger of his rifle.

' Time to die bunny-girl.'

_A/N I know, this is a deliberately cruel cliff-hanger, isn't it?_


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One: Escape from Veridree

_A/N: Zaz9-Zaa0__, Pretty Priestess__ good call on the rescue__ – though Fran would argue she had everything under control anyway!_

_P.S There are only two more chapters left after this one!_

Nylous, greasy black moustache flexing as he pulled his teeth back in a yellow toothed grin, pressed the barrel of his gun into the flesh of Fran's forehead.

Fran was about to perform a manoeuvre learnt in Eruyt to get out from between Nylous and the wall before he could shoot her dead, when she noticed that the Mist was swirling in tumult, a Quickening was building.

Nylous saw the distracted focus of her regard and spun around to face the new threat.

Balthier stood listing from side to side, head bowed and one arm almost gracefully outstretched as the Mist ripped and cycled around him, haloing his dishevelled and abused body in eldritch light.

Fran had a split second to shove the gelatinous pirate king away from her and towards Balthier's imminent Quickening before the Quickening shattered the very air around them.

' Ha!'

Balthier's body appeared to waver as if in a heat haze, then to Fran it was as though he separated into four, himself and three shadows selves taking the points of the compass around him, south, east and west.

Light and tumultuous shadow glittered and sparked all around, Balthier hunkered down into a crouch and his three other selves did the same.

Then, with the explosive grace of a bird launching itself skyward, he leapt upwards right into that whirling tumult of Mist.

'Element of treachery.'

She heard Balthier's voice; carried by eddies and whispers of Mist stroking against her ears.

She watched as a meteor of fire and anguish smashed into the pirate king who could do nothing but watch, open mouthed.

Fran was not struck dumb and quickly released her own Quickening to chain to couple with his.

Time was against them and they must be away before the explosive grenades ignited the Mist in the chamber.

Nylous screamed in his death throes as the Quickening chain they released against him pummelled him into the ground.

The echoes of Concurrence shattered the rest of the glass in the roof, creating a rain of glittering, needle sharp fragments.

' What just happened?'

Balthier questioned vaguely, eyes glassy as the Mist that had held him in thrall and called from him such a Quickening, fled his body.

Fran did not waste time answering him. He was in no state to understand the answer in any case.

Leaning flush against her body, Mist intoxicated and exhausted from days in captivity, Balthier was barely conscious.

Fran found the rope she had used to sail down into the chamber and refastened it to her body before wrapping her arms around Balthier and tugging on the rope tied around her waist, sharply, three times.

After a moment the rope jerked tight around her waist and she and Balthier were hoisted into the air. Nono worked the crank on the hoist swiftly and the two made their jerky ascent.

Fran concentrated on keeping hold of Balthier's increasingly dead weight. He was even thinner now than she remembered.

Humes filled the chamber and fired arrow and gun up at them; Nono threw grenades into the chamber between working the hoist, scattering their attackers.

The first explosion obliterated the machine Balthier had been building, throwing Nylous' men to the ground as the Mist ignited in a liquid wave of iridescent colour.

Fran held her breath, not wanting to be swayed by the Mist.

Finally reaching the shattered roof Fran pushed Balthier through the broken panes first; then wriggled her way through. Nono was already dismantling the hoist mechanism.

Fran lifted Balthier into the cycle's passenger seat and pulled the seat belt over him, his eyes were closed. He was unconscious.

Nono deftly slipped into Balthier's lap, curling his own tiny furred hands around Balthier's limp forearm to prevent him from falling once Fran started the cycle.

Fran leapt astride the cycle and gunned the engine as the explosions within the chamber increased in ferocity, flame and Mist leaping up fifty feet to tickle the sky.

In an updraft of fire, Mist and light Fran steered the cycle away from the flame wreathed tower as Hume pirates ran hither and thither in the courtyard below.

Fire and Mist at her back and the wind whipping through her hair Fran could not recall a time when she had felt more alive.

Caught in this sublime, transient moment, the first great escape, Fran could not hear the howling silent void left by the voice of the Wood.

All she could hear was the wind and the sky and the thunder of her own heartbeat.

Gunning the sky cycle's engines Fran's serene, distant beauty was marred for the first time in her many years of existence by a fierce, delighted, grin of pure exuberant triumph.

She did not know it, for the sensation was not one she had known herself capable of, but for the first time, Fran was truly happy.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two: Insurance mechanisms, the construction of legends and the motivations of Viera

Balthier remained unconscious for the best part of a week. Fran tended him aboard the Strahl docked in the Tchita Uplands.

His injuries were extensive, yet Fran was more concerned that he had scars from old abuses across his body, and he not yet finished growing.

His thinness spoke of one well used to going without sufficient nourishment and Fran wondered how a Hume with such wanton disregard for his own life had survived on his own as long as he clearly had.

It was on the sixth day since their escape from Veridree, while Fran was pondering how to get sustenance into him before he starved to death that Balthier awoke.

'Ghhn.'

Sitting up in one motion he looked about the familiar surroundings of the Strahl's sleeping cabin.

' I'm not dead?' He sounded infinitely surprised.

' You are not dead.' Fran confirmed for him.

Starting as if he had not seen her sitting beside his bed, Balthier turned to her and smiled.

'Fran. It's good to see you.'

Fran quirked an eyebrow, ' Was it not part of your plan that I would rescue you Pirate?'

Fran had pondered this and decided that it was well within the parameters of both Balthier's intelligence and his character that he had engineered events so that she would feel obligation to rescue him when no one else would.

She was marginally gratified, as well as amused, to see the blush of embarrassment creep up his neck to his face.

' I can explain.' He would not meet her eyes.

' I have no need of explanation.' Fran said coolly.

Balthier looked up at her stricken, ' Fran, please, it is not…'

Fran cocked her head to the side, ' Did you not engage my services as body guard? A body guard is responsible for the safety of their charge, yes?'

Balthier blinked, ' Well, yes, but..'

' Then I need no further explanation.'

Fran stood and made for the door of the cabin. ' Nono is gathering food. You must eat Balthier. Sky pirates no doubt need their strength.'

'Fran?'

She did not turn towards his confusion, but she paused at the threshold.

'Yes?'

' Are you not angry?'

He sounded almost humble and young. Fran knew that he would not see the smile hidden in her eyes when she turned to him.

' Why for would I be angry, Balthier?'

He winced, the tips of his ears reddening. ' I have used you for my own ends. I deceived you.'

Fran quirked an eyebrow, still he did not see the amusement in her regard.

He watched her diffidently, ' Would it help if I said sorry?'

She fancied that Balthier was not one to make apologies well or often and so let the waiting silence develop between them, Balthier's heart pounding in his chest and his scent pungent with uncharacteristic panic.

Fran studied him dispassionately.

'Your machine did not work.' She informed him.

'What?' He blinked, frowning.

'That which you built for Nylous, it was useless.'

Fran still couldn't work out, even with her keen mechanics eye, what the contraption was supposed to be.

'Oh, yes, I know.'

Balthier said vaguely. He had raised a hand to his back and was feeling out the whip scars tracing his shoulder blades, so many days after the original injury and not even magick could remove the scar.

' You knew?'

It had been puzzling her for days. The purpose for the buried caches, the machine, and the blue prints that Ruthy and Nylous had wanted.

Balthier looked at her with oddly tired, dull eyes, jaded suddenly. He elaborated grudgingly.

'It wasn't supposed to work. It was insurance against Nylous. I told him it was one of my father's inventions and only I had the means to make it work. It was plan B, should I need one.'

' So the treasure you buried, these spare parts you left all over Ivalice, the caches of loot, all part of your _insurance_?'

Fran wondered briefly about his words. So his father the madman was also an inventor?

She marvelled at the man's reputation that his son could trade on his inventiveness to save his own life.

' I have found that a sky pirate should always have at least one back up plan in case of unexpected hiccups. Ruthy's death made it necessary to enact mine.'

' Indeed.' Fran murmured.

Not for the first time, though it had been the best part of ten years since she felt thus, Fran found herself fascinated by the inner workings of a Hume mind.

Balthier mistook her cool amusement and thoughtfulness and became defensive, his tone pure petulance.

' It worked didn't it?'

Fran looked pointedly at his battered, pale form, looking young and frail in his bed. The vain Hume actually blushed and scowled deeper.

' Yes, well, it kept me alive. Can't ask for more than that.'

Fran sniffed, stifling the urge to chuckle at his indignation and strolled out of the sleeping cabin.

This escapade had indeed been an interesting diversion.

As she made her way to the main cabin of the Strahl Fran wondered should she linger with Balthier a time longer, what other amusements might he provide?

She was running a maintenance diagnostic on the Strahl's engines when Balthier managed to drag himself into the engine room.

'I thought you had left.'

He admitted when she turned quizzical eyes on him. He looked relieved.

'You have no further call for my services, Pirate?' she asked dryly.

Balthier smiled crookedly, though his eyes remained worried.

' Fran, I think that I will always be in need of your services, you however, might want shot of me.'

Fran turned to face him as he gave into weakness and sat down on the metal grated floor, back against the wall.

She was pleased to see he clutched an apple in one hand.

' The life of a sky pirate,' Fran began thoughtfully, ' is it always thus?'

Balthier shook his head, swallowing his mouthful of apple. ' No, much less dangerous.'

Fran allowed herself something passing close to a smile.

' A pity, that. It will be hard for the Leading Man to make a name for himself through peaceful means.'

Balthier looked surprised, either by her words or the smile that ghosted across her lips.

' Well, that is to say, that sky piracy needn't be this dangerous all the time, unless one wants it to be.' He amended swiftly.

' You would make yourself a legend, Balthier?'

Fran enquired, her thoughts aligning themselves in a particular way.

Just as they had scarce few times before when she chanced upon a Hume interesting enough to make her throw aside Viera solitude.

'It's an ambition of mine, yes.' Balthier agreed cautiously, clearly wondering where this conversation was heading.

Fran was remembering an offer made, in most off-hand fashion back in Balfonheim; a share in this Humes eccentric dreams.

A share in the skies.

' Through sky piracy you will do this?'

He nodded, smirking, 'and other daring do. And you Fran, would you like to be a legend?''

'No.' Fran said with simple honesty and Balthier's smile fell.

' But I have never met a Hume who would make himself a legend in his own life time.' She conceded thoughtfully.

She came to her decision as he watched her keenly, studying her as he tried to intuit her body language and her words.

'I would see how this is done; the making of a legend. Therefore I will accompany you in your endeavour.'

A huge smile lit his sharp, hunger thinned features, a smile of such infinite delight that Fran could not regret her words, not that she had planned to.

' Ah, Fran, I had hoped you'd say that.'

Forgetting his own weakness he jumped to his feet, pulling on the cuffs of his fresh, white shirt. He looked at her with laughing, dark eyes.

' Partners then?' He held out a ring bedecked hand.

Fran felt no hesitancy before placing her hand in his. They shook, and Fran took it as a good omen that he did not catch himself on her clawed fingers.

Still grinning broadly Balthier turned on his heel towards the cockpit. He looked over his shoulder at her.

'Mark my words, you and I shall be the stuff legends are made of!'

Fran watched him go, still so much a child to her but with unarguable potential.

She thought about his words. The stuff legends were made of. It was something to think on.

Adrift from her people, without Wood or Green Way, without sisters or home, Fran wondered what it might feel like to be a legend.

Perhaps she was no longer Viera, perhaps she would always be, through her own prideful choices, outcast and outsider, but if that be so why not become a pirate?

Fran felt herself smile, where no one could see.

If she was to be a pirate and declare herself partner to a Hume, one whose wits were in question no less, why not be also a legend, where once she was only a pariah?

Fran made her way towards the cockpit where Nono settled in one of the passenger seats, playing with his set of mechanical spanners, and Balthier sat in the pilot's chair.

Moving with the confidence of growing familiarity Fran sat down in the navigator's chair.

She began the take-off procedures, knowing that the destination was less important than the journey through the sky.

Balthier flashed her a sideways grin, his eyes fixed straight ahead towards the brilliant blue vista that was less sky than open canvas on which to paint ones dreams.

' Fran, lets fly!'


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three: Epilogues and possible prologues to greater things

'Balthier?'

Fran tapped her foot on the grating outside the closed door of the Captain's cabin.

' One moment.'

Balthier's voice was muffled as he called to her over the rush of hot water from his shower. Fran sighed.

One moment for the vain pirate was equal to a small eternity in these circumstances.

Fran walked back to the cockpit of the Strahl and took her seat in the navigator's chair.

Today marked one year and six months of partnership.

She and Balthier had, in no time at all thanks in part to their dramatic activities in Veridree, made quite a name for themselves.

The summons to Balfonheim to meet with the new pirate king had come as a welcome distraction however.

War had come to Ivalice much as Balthier had predicted. Shortly after their escape from Veridree Nabudis was eradicated and its kingdom now stood an instant wasteland; Dalmasca was under an occupation and its ruling family dead within two months of Nabudis' fall.

The woes of the ruling classes made little odds to pirates, yet Balthier, who had taken it into his head to only rob from those 'who deserve it' kept his ear to the ground for political nuances, hoping to pick his next target from those who would exploit the misery of Ivalice's people.

' What kind of a name is Reddas anyway?'

Balthier stalked into the cockpit fastening his cuffs, a towel across his shoulders and hair still slightly damp from the shower ( a piece of equipment that few could afford but which Balthier would possess come hell or high water).

' An assumed one, I would surmise.' Fran murmured as Balthier dropped into his seat beside her.

'Obviously.' Balthier agreed. ' I was referring to the choice, more so than the providence.'

' It is lacking in elegance, I suppose?' Fran suggested as she started the engines.

' It lacks a certain mystique, I would argue.' Balthier smirked.

He had grown beyond the vestiges of adolescence in the last year, his features fine boned and sharp as rapiers, no longer held the softness of youth.

' The mystique of a name such as _Balthier_?'

He had also taken to cultivating delicately curving sideburns that traced his jaw and multiple ear piercings; under Fran's careful eye he had gained muscle and maintained a healthy weight for his height.

' A fine pirate name, certainly.'

Balthier conceded having told her the truth of his lineage some time ago, though Fran had never asked.

_I have no intention of ever lying to you again Fran. A pirate must have one person in his crew that he can be honest with, after all. _

He had told her in defence of his confession.

Fran had yet to tell him of Eruyt and he had never once asked, but she knew that it was only a matter of time before she shared her burden with him also.

'Do you suspect trouble?' Fran asked him as they sailed through moonlit sky towards Balfonheim.

Balthier glanced at her briefly, 'No; do you?'

Fran shook her head, 'You seem ill at ease.'

His preoccupation with dressing in his best an indication of his unease, the white shirt luminous and the leather trousers subtly embroidered; the vest of supple leather and swirled with silver and green velvet.

Balthier sighed, 'I am not thrilled with the prospect of making the acquaintance of another pirate king. I have no intention of giving fealty in any rate.'

'Rikken and Elza said only that Reddas wished to meet the pirate responsible for deposing Nylous. Do you not trust their word?'

' Oh, no more or less than I trust the word of any other pirate.' Balthier said off-handedly.

'It is the fact that we know so little of this Reddas chap that bothers me. Pirates, especially those who would be kings, ought have a past.'

' Your words surprise me, Balthier, as you would seek to bury your own.'

Fran pointed out dryly as the lights of Balfonheim pricked the velvet dark horizon.

Balthier turned his head to throw a quick grin her way, ' That's true Fran, but I still _have_ a past. This man Reddas appears from nowhere as if conjured from Mist.'

'Sky Piracy has made you paranoid.' Fran teased gently.

Balthier scoffed, 'Paranoia is a fine thing in moderation but I prefer to consider this as due prudence.'

Fran allowed a ghost of a smile to light, briefly, upon her lips. 'As you say, Balthier.'

They settled into companionable silence for awhile.

A year in her company and Balthier had learnt to be more sparing with his words, quieter in his actions and his reflections.

Fran could not decide if this was a good thing or bad.

' I have been thinking about our next caper, Fran.'

Balthier spoke eventually; he still could not abide long periods of silence.

' We are destined for the Mosphoran Highwaste with the counterfeit Licence certificates.'

Fran reminded him. Smuggling contraband and Balthier's talent for forgery provided the majority of their income.

Balthier shook his head, ' That's business Fran, I was referring to our next big heist.'

Fran internalised her smile, waiting for the big reveal. They did not need to rob ancient tombs and steal from the houses of Imperial diplomats to make a good living from piracy.

They did so solely for fun.

' In a little over six months Vayne Solidor is to take up his consulship of Dalmasca.'

Balthier informed Fran in a conversational tone of voice. He kept his eyes on the approaching Balfonheim.

Fran studied the read-outs on her monitors and gauges, making sure nothing untoward would affect their descent and landing into the port.

'I was aware of this.'

'Hmm.' Balthier all but purred, a smile twitching his lips.

'We have never stolen from Dalmasca before.'

Fran glanced at him as he brought the ship into dock smoothly.

'You once said that Dalmasca had nothing to offer the discerning thief but sunburn and Chocobo excrement.'

She reminded him pointedly.

Balthier turned to her as they powered down the ship. ' I'm sure there must be something of value in the palace treasury, Fran.'

He sounded just a little annoyed that she was threatening to spoil his fun.

' Something Vayne Solidor would pay handsomely to have returned to him.'

Fran stared at him for a moment, Balthier gazed placidly back at her.

He had perfected a smooth veneer to go with his mendacious tongue and did not often falter in his act now.

Fran suspected he had learnt this from her, again she was not sure if she did not actually miss the more free and demonstrative Balthier.

'You would extort the son of the Emperor with ransomed treasure?'

She wanted to make sure she had understood him correctly.

A cunning grin slipped free of his facade, 'Why not? I need to perfect the art of blackmail and who better for a target than Vayne Solidor?'

Fran shook her head, 'You are like to be hanged.'

Balthier shook his head as they disembarked the Strahl and made their way to the Manse on Saccio Lane.

' Hung, drawn and quartered actually.' Balthier corrected her cheerfully.

'Really Fran, if a man is to become a legend he cannot do so through petty forgery and smuggling. He must make sure to have his name on the lips of every man, woman and child in Ivalice.'

'As the fool who thought to blackmail the most powerful man in Ivalice; the commander in chief of the Archadian army, and suffered accordingly?'

Fran questioned dryly, Balthier scowled.

'Fran, please. Give me some credit, I shall not be caught.'

'You are so confident of this, Balthier?'

They had reached the Manse and could see Rikken and Elza waiting for them by the large front doors.

Balthier turned and smirked at Fran.

'Of course Fran; I am supremely confident that I can pull off such a caper once I have properly planned out the details. '

' Why?'

They stopped for a moment before heading up to the door to meet the other two and be introduced to the elusive Reddas.

Balthier was grinning with confidence and some amusement at her confusion.

'Because I have something no other pirate has ever had.'

He was determined to draw out the suspense and Fran had no reason to deny him his entertainment.

'And that is?'

' You, Fran. I have you.'

Balthier promptly pivoted on his heel and made his way, a confident couerl-like swagger to the sway of his hips, towards Rikken and Elza.

Fran did pause for a moment to watch his departing back; a smile ghosting across her lips.

_And I have you_.

She thought as she stepped up alongside him and they greeted their compeers.

And in lieu of Green Way, her sisters and her Wood, Fran thought that she should be very thankful that she had found this Hume to call partner in her exile.

* * *

_A/N __And__ there __we have it, a beginning to a legend._

_I would like to thank __everyone__ (again)__ who read and reviewed. I am hugely grateful for all the kind words and encouragement. The response to this story has been better than I could have imagined!_

_Spikey44_

_P.S - For those who are interested I have a war time tale for our piratical duo 'The War Privateer' in the works, turns out Balthier wants a shot at spinning a good yarn, now Fran's had her say. - I really should get a life - fictional characters are running amok in my brain! - but these two are just so much fun to write!_


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